


turnout

by windowright (twoif)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ballet, Alternate Universe - Inception Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 17:42:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7583788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twoif/pseuds/windowright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Up top, Kim Jongin is one of K-ARTS' best young ballet dancers. One level down, Kim Jongin is one of EXO's best dreamcade fighters.  And in between, Kim Jongin meets Lu Han.</p>
            </blockquote>





	turnout

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [August 2012](http://runandgun.livejournal.com/26872.html), as part of the summer 2012 [runandgun](http://runandgun.livejournal.com/) challenge.

He speeds through the streets of Gangnam, liquid on his modified Suzuki Hayabusa. Up ahead, his opponent rounds the corner, swingarm flashing silver in the mid-afternoon light, so he slams his brakes, torques his bike sharply to the right, slides it at an almost 30-degree angle to the asphalt. He narrowly avoids crashing into the edge of a 12-meter media pole. The screens are alternating between gibberish headlines about the mayoral elections, the uniform and asinine faces of a new boy band hawking CDs, and the words "10:37, 3 REMAINING" in large neon green letters. A warning from Tao, this week's gamekeeper: a little more than ten and a half minutes left in today's round, and only three players still in the game. Jongin likes his odds.

The roar of his opponent's acceleration is the only warning he gets before smoke consumes his line of sight. The acrid smell of burning tires even manages to sneak past his helmet shield, sharp and distinct like a slap to the face. _Burnout_ , he realizes, amazed. But just as he swings his bike around to gawk, he sees a wink of chrome blue through the smoke veil, looping around to head in his direction—his opponent's Kawasaki Ninja, unharmed.

 _Strategic burnout_ , he amends in his head with a grin, as he spins and heads out, wheels squealing. _All right, you smart fucker, bring it on._

The bike hums under his palms, the sound of the engine as intimate as his own breathing. It's comforting, almost alive. Truthfully, he's never ridden a motorcycle in his life. But down here, it's what you think you can do, not what you've actually done, that matters. And if there's one thing Kim Jongin has, it's confidence—which is why he's only two months in and already one of the deadliest players in the game.

Of course, he's worn his black motorcycle helmet since the first day, but that doesn't count for anything. Last week Jongin threw a man out of the windows of the 40th floor of D-Cube City's headquarters, and _he_ had been wearing a Venetian carnival mask with a fake nose that curled out like a beak. Baekhyun likes to pretend the masks each player picks represents something about them ("Go on, guess what the beak means," he had joked when the glass settled). But Jongin picked his because it was easy to visualize, covered his whole face, and was the last thing he saw on the streets before stepping foot into the arena. So maybe it means he's lazy. He prefers to tell Baekhyun, _it means I build from example._

He turns around. Blue Kawasaki is nowhere to be seen, and everything is eerily quiet. The light's changed too, something grey and industrial, like the half hour before rain. Ten-minute mark. Jongin's never liked Gangnam much. Seeing it in the half-light, devoid of people or life, makes it more interesting, but not any more likeable. Over his shoulder, an abandoned plastic bag turns cartwheels in the wake of Jongin's exhaust. Other than Jongin, it is the only thing moving on the streets.

"Eyes on the road, Black Rider," someone quips from a point preposterously close to Jongin's face. Jongin whips around, almost smacking his head into the stranger's mask: a _lianpu_ mockup patterned in yellow and black, bright red accents for the eyebrows and mouth, and a white dot on the nose. The stranger leans back to avoid Jongin's head, in the process revealing how he got so close—he is crouched, actually _crouched_ , like a cat waiting to pounce, on the handlebars of Jongin's motorcycle.

With a jerk, Jongin starts drifting, taking a left a little too close to the sidewalk for comfort. Peking Opera just laughs, twisting himself into a ball on one side of Jongin's bike, then unfurling again when Jongin rights them both.

"Fuck," Jongin hisses, full weight on the acceleration as the Suzuki speeds up, faster than Jongin's ever gone on wheels. Still the stranger doesn't budge from his perch. Nine and a half minutes, Jongin thinks. He'd still like to take out Blue Kawasaki, but you take your opponents as they come. For the moment, Peking Opera doesn't look like he's leaving without a little assistance.

Time to switch tactics. He knows he's coming up to a ramp for a highway that overlooks the river. Without much practice in grappling or wrestling, Jongin's gotten good at using infrastructure to his advantage. In this case, the highway is as good a place as any to throw Peking Opera off and redouble his energy on finding Blue Kawasaki.

"What do you do on flat arenas, then?" the stranger jokes, as if reading Jongin's mind.

Jongin grits his teeth and glares at the stranger from behind the smoky shield of his helmet. "You talk too much," he grunts, slightly spooked. He tries to think of all the other feeder ramps he knows, or if there's any other variation in the land. But what if Peking Opera knows about those, too? A thought comes to him like a sudden cold snap: _could Peking Opera read his mind?_ But it's far more likely that the stranger must have somehow spent the last few rounds watching Jongin. Jongin isn't sure if Baekhyun lets people be in the arena without participating, but then again, as Black Rider, Jongin's known more for skillful execution than surprise. He could try just wrestling Peking Opera off, but he doesn't know if he could handle keeping the bike upright at the same time. Even down here, it's much harder multi-tasking things that are new. That's one of the first lessons Jongin learned, when he tried to blow out a circuit and aim a sniper rifle at the same time and ended up with a firestorm instead.

"Look up," Peking Opera says, singsong as he taps the top of Jongin's helmet. "Highway overpass ahead."

"What?" snaps Jongin, thrown out of his thoughts for a second time. "We're already on the highw–"

Which is how he finds himself staring down a barrel of a gun as he flies off the bike, chin smarting from where Peking Opera caught it with a roundhouse kick.

"Hey, I'll see you around?" Peking Opera offers, smile exaggerated by the mask, and Jongin's head smashes against the asphalt before he gets a chance to spit out—

 

 

+

 

 

—fuck you," Jongin screams as he bolts upright, kicking himself out of the dream.

He's smacked in the face by the greasy smell of Baekhyun's spicy shrimp pizza, completely unlike the burning rubber and gasoline from seconds before. The curtains that surround his cot, separating him from the rest of the dreamers, ripple softly, as if trying to calm him down. Jongin rips them apart, almost tearing one of them off the rings. When he crashes through, he's embarrassed to find the dreamcade, as always, eerily still around him, the kind of silence that only comes with a room full of sleeping people. The adrenaline drains from him, taking with it the memory of tires squealing, a bullet hitting him in the chest, cracking his ribs in perfect, painful detail. He is back to his own body, his ratty zip-up hoodie and grey jazz pants, a pair of Kyungsoo's cast-off tennis shoes waiting, patiently askew, by the foot of the cot.

"You're thrown out early," Baekhyun calls out, slightly muffled. He is leaning over the PASIV station, fiddling with one of the hundred knobs as he blindly picks off all the shrimp from a slice of pizza. Jongin notes with amusement that the entire pizza box is balanced on the protruding feet of the customer sleeping next to the machine. "Bad day?"

"Got unlucky," Jongin says, trying for nonchalance. He itches to ask Baekhyun about Peking Opera, even though he knows it's one of the most prominent rules of EXO to never ask about the other dreamers. It's not like Jongin has much to lose, but, as Baekhyun keeps snidely reminding him, not everyone playing at EXO is a penniless dance student. _People come here to escape who they are_ , Baekhyun had explained the first time he walked Jongin around the brawl arena. Jongin, too, had been one of those people.

"That'd be a first for you," Baekhyun quips, finally looking over his shoulder to raise an eyebrow at Jongin. "Not counting your luck with girls, of course."

"What you know about my sex life—" Jongin begins, but Baekhyun waves him off, scowling at a dosage marking on a bottle and, with robotic efficiency, reloading the sedative reserve in the PASIV.

"Save it. I was gamekeeper when we did Miari. You can't lie to me, you walking stereotype."

Jongin isn't one to blush, but he drops his head instinctually, feeling his cheeks burn. "I was distracted," he protests. "It wasn't a proper representation of, you know."

Baekhyun laughs. In one deft movement, he whisks the pizza box off its perch and shoves the dreamer back through the curtains, swiveling in his chair to grin at Jongin. He thrusts the pizza at Jongin, who shakes his head. In general, Jongin's not susceptible to the nausea some of the other customers get after being forcibly kicked out of a dream. But eating after a session can still make him a little queasy, and anyway, he's never been a big fan of shrimp and cheese.

"Get out of here, Billy Elliot," Baekhyun tells him. "It's past your bedtime."

"See you tomorrow?"

"You know the rules," says Baekhyun, shaking his head.

"Just testing you." Jongin hums contentedly as he picks up his shoes, jamming them on his toes. "See you in three days."

 

 

+

 

 

It takes Jongin a little over an hour by public transit to get from the dreamcade in Sinchon to the K-ARTS studios in Seocho-dong. At nine o'clock at night, the practice rooms are comfortably occupied. Jongin checks the schedules and ends up sitting in on a make-up basic barre class, gliding noiselessly into the last slot at the barre. He lets his mind empty of everything but the combinations: lower right leg to _tendu_ , _développé_ , fifth position and _grande battement_ to the side. The instructor doesn't comment when Jongin spins off into his own routines. By now most of the students have glimpsed Jongin's face, and, his identity established, leave him well enough alone. They lift their legs in monotonous repetition, their leg warmers different shades of cream and light pink, the occasional faded grey, rippling around Jongin like the dreamcade curtains.

Jongin's never confused the line between the arcade and reality. He isn't confused now. Awake, as he moves from _ronde de jambe en l'air_ to pirouettes, he dreams of endless _frappés_ and _pliés_ surrounding him like the smoke of a burnout. It hides all trace of the others—the dance campus, Blue Kawasaki, Peking Opera. Jongin is the fire in the center, clear and constant and under control. He spins until he can't see anything, until his hand accidentally smacks the mirror and the entire class erupts into nervous giggles, turning away to spare him the embarrassment.

"Jongin-sshi," the instructor begins, amused.

"Sorry," he mutters. "I'll stop now."

When he gets home, Kyungsoo is waiting at the entrance, arms crossed and eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Where were you?" he asks, instinctively reaching for Jongin's gym bag to sort out the sweaty clothes and dirty socks.

"Practice," Jongin grunts, surrendering to Kyungsoo's fussing.

And in his own way, he is telling the truth.

 

 

+

 

 

For the last few weeks, Jongin's been having trouble waking up. In his sleep, he wakes up over and over, traveling through an endless series of tunnels that never quite crests into reality. His dreams are thick and block out the sun streaming through the window, his alarm, Kyungsoo's shouts from the kitchen to _get up, Jongin, right now, or else you'll be late._

By the time he's out of bed, Kyungsoo is long gone. There's a bowl of neatly arranged hardboiled eggs and two pieces of cold, hardened wheat toast on the table; also, a scrawled note reminding him to not drink too much coffee. _It stunts your growth_ , Kyungsoo likes to say, and the last time this came up, Jongin put his elbow on Kyungsoo's shoulder, pressing down. _So how do you explain this?_ Jongin had said, an eyebrow raised, and Kyungsoo only snorted, swapping Jongin's badly mixed instant coffee for a mug of herbal tea.

But this morning there's nothing between him and the tin of Dongsuh mixes, and Jongin gives into the craving. The caffeine won't help, he knows. The lethargy is probably a buildup of the dreamcade sedative in his system, and really, the only cure is to stop going. For the moment, though, the burnt, thin taste of the coffee on his tongue is perfect and shakes the last parts of him awake. He'll learn moderation with the dreamcade next week.

He doesn't touch the toast, but he does tuck a hardboiled egg into his jeans pocket. It'll make a good projectile during theory class, for when Kyungsoo pays a little _too_ much attention to the lecture. And, if he's lucky, it might bounce off Kyungsoo and peg Junmyeon in the back of the head as well.

 

 

+

 

 

"That's it," Kyungsoo says as he pulls bits of egg white out of his hair in disgust, "I'm never cooking for you again."

"That's what you said last time," Jongin says with a smirk, "when I let the kimchi spaghetti mold in the fridge."

Kyungsoo shakes his head mournfully, pulling out his phone to look at his dimly lit reflection. "I wish I had listened to myself then," he complains. He flicks a piece of the eggshell at Jongin's face. Jongin dodges it playfully, plucking another piece from Kyungsoo's neck as he moves away.

"I'm not sorry," Jongin adds. "Junmyeon's face was priceless."

"Because who else would think of a solo food fight on the first day of theory class?"

"Junmyeon takes things too seriously."

" _You_ should take things more seriously."

Jongin shrugs. He doesn't remind Kyungsoo that being one of the few young dancers on the fast track comes with its fair share of pitfalls. Jongin's given free reign over his curriculum, and no one minds when, like last night, he pokes his nose where it doesn't belong and does as he pleases, but when the school had put on a performance of _Le Corsaire_ last session and Jongin didn't get the lead, he'd been called in personally to Lee Soo-Man's office to explain himself. _I have plenty of time_ , he'd argued, and for the rest of the month, Yunho, their technique instructor, was told to work Jongin (and Jongin alone) to the bone, as punishment for mouthing off.

"Forget it," Jongin tells Kyungsoo. "I don't want to think about Junmyeon and his class rep act any more than I absolutely have to." He tugs at Kyungsoo, who gamely gives Jongin his elbow, letting Jongin pull him closer to his chest and away from a petite bass cellist trying to manhandle her instrument down the hallway. "Skip class with me. Let's—"

 _—go shopping or something_ , is what he means to say. Instead, Jongin ends up with his mouth pressed into the cotton front of someone's shirt, a strong arm tight around Jongin's neck as he jerks on Kyungsoo's elbow for balance. His first instinct is to flip his weight forward, throw his opponent off. It's a dreamcade reflex, one he's never had to use in the real world. He's unsure, in fact, if it'd even work in reality. Baekhyun had warned him about contamination, how spending too much time in shared dreaming leaves some addicts imagining themselves with wings, telepathy, the capacity to breathe underwater, and always ends with them jumping off buildings, drowning, crushed to bits by an oncoming truck. It's why Jongin's so reluctant to mold his shared dreaming body into something stronger. But before he has a chance to test out his throw, he's spun around and put firmly back on two feet.

"Sorry," someone says gruffly. "Are you okay?"

The stranger standing in front of Jongin is taller than most of the dancers Jongin sees on a daily basis, with bleached, slightly fried hair that would never be allowed on stage. He holds out one hand, palm parallel to Jongin, as if he was afraid Jongin might at any time suddenly lose his footing and collapse back into him. His other hand is wrapped around the wrist of another boy, much shorter and slighter, who turns out to be the owner of the pressed cotton button-down Jongin accidentally tasted. Contrite, cotton button-down keeps glancing up at Jongin, lips drawn together in a tight, embarrassed smile. He nods to Jongin, then to Kyungsoo, before turning to whisper to a third boy, who doesn't react, too intent on staring unnervingly at some point left of Jongin's shoulder.

These two, Jongin can tell, _are_ dancers. The one staring is wearing a tight-fitting heather grey v-neck, washed so thin Jongin feels he could run his gaze right through it, and despite the clean ironed planes of the button-down shirt, both of them are wearing loose-fitting sweatpants and junky trainers, a kind of unfashionable uniform for dancers away from the studio. Their hair is neatly pushed away from their foreheads, and clipped at the back to show their necks.

Only the tallest is in jeans and a blazer jacket, which makes him look remarkably older. "You're not hurt?" he prompts. As if coaxing a child to say hi to distant relatives, he drags the second one out of hiding. "Lu Han," he says, and Lu Han nods again at Jongin, acknowledging the introduction, "never looks where he's going."

"It's okay," Kyungsoo hurries to interject. "Jongin never does either."

Jongin licks his lips, trying to think of some way to protest. He gets the distinct impression that he and Lu Han are being treated like children, or even worse, like dogs that snarled at each other while passing in the street. It's not helped by Kyungsoo wrenching his elbow from Jongin's grasp and placing his hand on Jongin's arm instead.

"I'm Wu Fan," the stranger says. He grins at Kyungsoo, not without charm, and Jongin bristles involuntarily at not being addressed. "Everyone calls me Kris though." Having been released from Kris' grip, Lu Han immediately ducks behind his friend, who smiles vaguely at Jongin's shoulder and scoots closer to Kris. Jongin has seen magnetic pencil toppers like the two of them before—couple bears who smooch if you let them get close enough. And magnetic is a good word, he thinks drily, for Lu Han, who tucks his chin into the crook of his friend's shoulder, peering curiously at Jongin. He’d moved swiftly, like a swarm of birds or flecks of iron following a magnet, guiding his body effortlessly from Kris' arm to his friend's shoulder.

Jongin clears his throat. "I'm not hurt," he says, several beats too slow. "Don't worry."

Lu Han nods again. Jongin is about to snap at him, _do you actually say words or do you just use semaphore?_ , when Lu Han opens his mouth. "We're looking for studio three," he ventures. His voice doesn't have the same clipped quality of Kris', but there's something different in the way he forms his vowels, something familiar in the lilt. Jongin squints, trying to place it and failing. "Do you know which direction we should be headed?"

"You're going the right way," Kyungsoo says eagerly. "Just a couple more doors, on your left. It'll be marked."

There's a brief silence as Lu Han pokes his friend in the stomach several times. Finally, his friend exhales and says, "Thanks," still not looking at anyone in particular. The whole exchange suddenly strikes Lu Han as very funny, and he buries his face in his friend's neck, laughing. Kris throws them both a look of consternation before turning to Kyungsoo and Jongin, hand out, palm down this time, as if asking for forgiveness. Jongin feels like he's been involuntarily thrown into a _seungmu_ , everyone around him moving slowly and ritualistically and he alone unsure of the steps. He puts his arm on Kyungsoo's shoulder and pushes down for reassurance.

"Thanks," Kris echoes, urging the other two ahead with irritated pats on their backs. "I'm sorry, again, for the—" he gestures at Jongin. "For running into you," he finishes, awkwardly.

Kyungsoo and Jongin both nod, watching the three strangers move further away. As they walk, Kris whispers furiously to the other two. Lu Han's friend doesn't seem to react, just nods absently, while Lu Han, still clinging to his friend's shoulder, gazes up at Kris with the expression of a very studious but very disobedient child.

Right before they move out of earshot, Lu Han twists around, his eyes bright even at a distance as he calls out, "Hey, I'll see you around?"

"What a bunch of weirdos," Jongin mutters.

Kyungsoo glares and snatches his hand up so that they're both waving goodbye. "You don't know who they are?"

"Weirdos," Jongin repeats, as if to imply, _obviously._

"They're the exchange students from Beijing Dance Academy," Kyungsoo snaps. "They're here for the entire fall session."

"I don't know how you know these things."

" _I pay attention_."

Jongin touches, almost subconsciously, the spot where Kris had restrained him. Not a dancer then, he thinks, but the three Chinese students had been too closely bonded for Kris to have not been involved in dance at all. Maybe a trainer, then, or even their chaperone?

"Anyway, who cares," Jongin concludes. "Skip class with me," he says as he nudges Kyungsoo's neck with his elbow. "Let's play video games."

"It's a wonder you haven't been thrown out of school," Kyungsoo tells him, shaking his head.

"Only because you've made it your life's work to ruin my fun," Jongin laughs.

They don't skip class. Kyungsoo leads Jongin gently but firmly to technique, where Yunho seems pleasantly surprised to see them both. Jongin does all the exercises intently and carefully, just to piss Yunho off. But as they work on Jongin's _attitude devant_ , his left leg raised in an angle in front and bent in a Balanchine style, Jongin glances at his pose in the mirror and suddenly halts. His chin throbs. Lu Han's parting shot, just like Peking Opera's, hangs in the air, a double exposure echoed in the line of Jongin's leg. _I'll see you around_ , he'd said, leg still raised in a kick. He hears wind rushing by, the crunch of metal, the sudden bark of a gunshot.

"Jongin?" Yunho asks, peering curiously at him. "Are you still with us?"

"Sorry, yes," Jongin says, finishing into a _embôité_ and _tour piqué_ combination across the floor. "I'm here," he says, meaning _no._

 

 

+

 

 

Jongin and Kyungsoo are called out of theory class the next morning by an announcement over the PA system. Jongin raises his eyebrows when he and Kyungsoo silently close the door behind them, and Kyungsoo shrugs, eyes wide, baffled. Junmyeon, who had been mysteriously absent from class, is waiting for them in the hallway, chatting quietly with Greg, one of the open workshop instructors. They stop when Jongin and Kyungsoo join them, and Junmyeon offers Jongin a hesitant smile.

"No projectiles today?" Junmyeon asks.

For a moment, Jongin can't process what Junmyeon is asking. Then, snorting, he pats his pants, front and back, and holds his palms out to Junmyeon, showing off his empty hands. "Nothing," he says. "Kyungsoo- _hyung_ said he was going to stop cooking for me." Junmyeon laughs nervously, and Jongin catches Kyungsoo rolling his eyes.

"Studio three," Greg reminds them, which, Jongin thinks later, should’ve been warning enough. Still, Jongin is surprised when he opens the door on Lu Han, balanced in a clumsy _arabesque à la hauteur_ and supported by his silent friend who, kneeling, has his hands on Lu Han's waist. Kris is leaning against the barre, notation sheets in one hand, calling out the rhythm in what Jongin assumes is Chinese. Lu Han laughs as he falls away from the position, shaking out the raised leg and grimacing. He stops when he sees his audience.

"I've never been good with those," Lu Han says, shyly crouching down to his friend's level. "Yixing was teaching me."

Yixing looks up as if realizing for the first time that he and Lu Han are no longer dancing. He smiles, brushing his knees off as he gets up and stretches into a _tendu_ , then raises his back leg into a textbook _arabesque demi_. "I've been dancing longer than Lu Han has, though," he says apologetically. "And I'm not very good either."

Jongin rushes forward. "Do it again," he orders Yixing. He flexes his toes and moves to stand almost hip to hip with Yixing, who, taken aback, glances at Kris for confirmation. When Kris nods, Yixing switches legs, waits for Jongin to do the same, and raises his back leg again, this time slightly higher. Jongin follows along, lifting his leg in time. In the mirror, they are staggered but synchronized as they hold the position. Yixing is taller, but Jongin notes with pleasure that his own extension, cleaner and more Russian, gives the whole image a sense of balance.

He'd been right, of course, about them being dancers, but he hadn't expected them to be _ballet_ dancers. He wishes Lu Han was in position on his other side, or that he hadn't worn jeans. The fabric chafes against his thighs, too tight. Yixing raises an eyebrow and, light and quick, switches into a _chassee-cabriole-brisé_ combination. Jongin takes a breath before launching into the same and can't help grinning when he realizes Yixing is repeating the steps alongside him. They do the whole thing one more time, traversing into the opposite corner of the room, and Jongin is delighted when they end in mirror-imaged _croisés_.

"You should really say something," Kyungsoo says to Kris from the other side of the room. "If you let Jongin go, he'll keep showing off."

"I don't mind." Kris pushes himself away from the barre to inspect Yixing and Jongin, his stare moving like a spotlight from their hands raised in perfect fifth to their toes pointed identically. Jongin tries to wipe the smirk from his face, to echo Yixing's flat, serene expression. "Yixing doesn't get a lot of chances to show off. You can't tell from his face, but he's enjoying it."

Jongin waits for Yixing to put his hands down first, then does the same, moving his weight from one foot to another to ease the burn of the jeans. "So competitive," Lu Han whispers from where he is stretching on the floor. It's true, so Jongin doesn't try to deny it. Kris' unbroken gaze on all three of them makes him feel over-dressed and ridiculous, and he whips off his hoodie, trying belatedly to not seem overeager.

"Well," Greg says, amused, "I guess we can dispense with the introductions. Except for Junmyeon," he adds, when Junmyeon appears at his side, offering his hand to Kris.

"Kim Junmyeon," he says. "I'm actually not a dancer. I'm a major in choreography."

"I know," Kris says, taking Junmyeon's hand. "I'm also studying choreography. Greg told me we'd be working together during our stay here."

"Kris and Junmyeon are going to choreograph a dance," Greg explains, "for the four of you to perform at the arts festival. We thought it'd be more interesting this way, instead of a straightforward exchange program."

"I hope you don't mind that I've already done some planning," Kris says. He thrusts the notation sheets into Junmyeon's hands. From what Jongin can see, 'some planning' seems to translate to 'most of the work'; the pages are complete with computerized sheet music and most of the bars are already covered with marks designating the positions of the dancers' bodies. Kris stares down at Junmyeon with a smile that doesn't quite meet his eyes, as if daring Junmyeon to say something. "I just thought I'd save us some time," Kris continues, "since we'll only be here for a little over a month."

Lu Han suddenly appears at Jongin's side. He taps the back of Jongin's hand and, when Jongin looks at him, annoyed, whispers, " _Dui_ –Kris is a bit of a show-off too. We all are."

"What's your party trick, then?" Jongin whispers back.

"Oh, I meant everyone besides me," Lu Han confesses, laughing. "I don't have any talent. _They're_ the ones the academy actually sent over. I just tagged along."

His lips are almost pressed against Jongin's ear, so that his words come hot and slightly ticklish. Jongin tries to summon back Peking Opera, the way he had said, _hey, I'll see you around?_ Maybe Jongin had just been imagining the tone, misled by the similarity in the words. He can't really remember Peking Opera's voice through the haze of pain and shock of the kick, and anyway, what are the chances? Lu Han's body is lean and athletic just like Peking Opera's, and probably better suited to dancing along the edge of a motorcycle handlebar, but so is Jongin's, and so, really, are hundreds of other thrill-seekers in Seoul.

"He's lying," Yixing cuts in. "Lu Han's the only one of us who can speak Korean."

"You're not so bad," Jongin points out.

"Of course," Yixing says, nudging Lu Han in the shoulder. "Lu Han's been tutoring me since we found out we were going to Korea. He made us come here a week before the start date, so that we could practice conversational Korean with street vendors."

"How else are you going to fend off all your admirers?" Lu Han jokes. " _Oppa_ ," he croons in a high falsetto, grabbing Yixing's hands as he jumps up and down in a series of _changements_ , "dance with me."

Jongin shakes his head. Lu Han and Yixing continue ribbing each other in fluent Chinese, and Jongin, unable to follow along, loses interest. A little ways off, Kris is explaining the notation sheets to Junmyeon, who nods hurriedly at everything. Jongin will bet five thousand won that Junmyeon is lost, but he'll also bet five thousand won that Junmyeon will come back the next day with dark circles under his eyes and all the music and directions memorized. Kyungsoo and Greg are chatting idly, but on occasion Greg will tap Kyungsoo on the arm, and Kyungsoo will lean down and join Junmyeon and Kris' conversation.

If he could freeze this moment, Jongin thinks, it would be the sum of his life now, all eighteen years. Dancers to one side, passing him like ships in the night; instructors, choreographers, teachers glancing at him, planning his future for him without consultation. The mirrors reflecting him in an endless loop, magnifying each imperfection and highlighting each perfect turnout. Himself in the center, waiting for a stage he can't envision and an audience he can't see. His world is made of endless variations of this studio, this scene, these people. Baekhyun had first found him in EXO’s free play levels, constructing empty studios to practice his routines. _You've made this same room about ten times now. Don't you want to try something else?_ Baekhyun had asked, with a thousand-watt smile and a portal to the arena opening up behind him like a wormhole, and Jongin had asked, without a hint of irony, _what else is there?_

But this is reality. There is no wormhole. Jongin's life is a program with no acts, no intermissions; every break is merely a rehearsal. Yixing's Korean is easy to understand, and his pronunciation, modeled off Lu Han's, is incredibly accurate. But Jongin understands people best through dance. He itches now to throw off all his clothes, get back to that soaring _cabriole_ , Yixing's legs beating in time with his. He watches Lu Han as he laughs at one of Yixing's incomprehensible jokes, and thinks of that _arabesque_ : clumsy, unfinished, but drawn out in a line so strong it makes Jongin think of magnets. Lu Han's body stretched out between two poles, hovering, waiting for Jongin to meet it.

 

 

+

 

 

"It's a ballet about wanting to dance," Kris explains to them later that afternoon as they gather in a smaller practice room, photocopies of his notation sheets, now adorned with neat numbering and annotations by Junmyeon, spread out between them. "I know that's conventional, but I figured for my first try at choreography I should do something easy."

"Imagination is not _duizhang_ 's strongest point," Lu Han elaborates in a stage whisper to Jongin. Kris glares at him, and Lu Han adopts the same childish expression Jongin had seen when they’d first met in the hallway.

"The first act is a _pas de deux_ , the second a _pas de trois_ with a walk-in appearance by the fourth dancer, and finally, a quartet that ends in a _solo bravura_ variation," Kris continues. "It's a lot of different formations for a relatively short piece, so maybe I should explain the plot first?" From across the table, Junmyeon nods. Kris examines the notation sheets, then gestures at Junmyeon with an awkward smile on his face. "Actually, maybe you should."

Lu Han and Yixing exchange amused glances. Confused, Jongin looks to Kyungsoo for an explanation, but Kyungsoo is intently flipping through his copy of the notation sheet, occasionally adding to them with quick, neat strokes of his mechanical pencil. Jongin reluctantly moves his copy closer, thumbing through the pages as he slumps in his chair. The lines and blobs fly by like an abstract picture book, and he doesn't catch anything of interest.

"Jongin will be the main character," Junmyeon begins, glancing every so often at Kris, who nods absently, spinning a mechanical pencil in one large hand. "In the first scene, he encounters Lu Han, who is dance personified. The scene ends with Jongin trying to follow Lu Han, who runs off stage. The second act is a _pas de trois_ with Kyungsoo and Yixing, who symbolize Jongin's anchors to reality. Lu Han will appear and weave his way through the other dancers. Jongin is the only one who sees him. Kyungsoo and Yixing will—"

"Question," Jongin blurts out. Kris turns to look at him, eyes unreadable, the pencil still pirouetting from middle finger to thumb, over and over again. Jongin draws himself up and turns to a random page in his photocopy, pretending to examine it closely before speaking. "Why did you put Lu Han in the muse role?"

"It's not a muse," Kris interjects. "He's more of a spirit. Like the Wilis in _Giselle_."

"Only Lu Han's not going to dance Jongin's character to death," Junmyeon adds.

"Well," Kris snorts, the pencil falling from his hands lazily, "we don't know that for sure yet."

An awkward silence follows as Junmyeon and Kris stare at each other, communicating in little eyebrow twitches and aborted hand movements. Junmyeon is the first to break eye contact. "The ending is still being written," he says slowly. "Kris and I are discussing it."

"It's part of the collaboration," Kris says, deadpan. On the other side of him, Yixing snickers. There's a thud under the table and Yixing's expression slides back to neutral. Jongin wonders if it'd been Lu Han or Kris who trod on Yixing's toes under the table. Probably Lu Han—Kris doesn't seem the type to use subterfuge.

"What's a general sense of the third act, at least?" asks Kyungsoo. Jongin peers at the page Kyungsoo's reading and tries to emulate. But with all the pages covered in identical chicken scratch (Kris' writing) and margin notes (Junmyeon's and, in Kyungsoo's case, his own), he can't tell where Kyungsoo is looking. Finally giving up, he throws his photocopy down on the table. He's always been the kind to learn from doing, anyway.

"It's kind of three different _pas de deux_. Jongin and Kyungsoo, Jongin and Yixing, Jongin and Lu Han. Then Jongin does a variation in which he decides whether to follow Kyungsoo and Yixing back into the real world or to follow Lu Han into the world of illusion." Junmyeon chews his lip. "Do you think it's too much dancing for Jongin?"

Jongin sighs, shoving the notation sheet as far away from him as possible and glaring at Junmyeon. Junmyeon had been one of the first students at K-ARTS that Jongin had encountered when, separated from the other prospective fast-track students, he'd wandered into a small group session where Junmyeon and a few other students were working on a rewrite of the _grand pas de six_ in Act III of _Swan Lake_. Jongin had wanted to stay for the discussion, which bandied Graeme Murphy's production against Matthew Bourne's and ran through each revival with a fanatic's eye for detail, but Junmyeon, ever the good boy, had only been interested in getting Jongin back to his tour group. Since then, that's how they'd related to each other: Junmyeon looking out for Jongin's own good, and Jongin resisting resentfully the whole way. _I feel invested in your success_ , Junmyeon had told him last session, when he'd tracked Jongin all the way back to his apartment to tell him not to spend summer vacation ensconced in a studio instead of at home with his parents, and most days, Jongin would find it touching, if he didn't find Junmyeon immensely creepy.

"Well, I think it sounds great," Kyungsoo tries, tentatively smiling at Kris and Junmyeon in turn, like a spectator at a tennis match. "I'm really excited to get started," he continues, which seems to end the conversation, much to everyone's relief.

As they leave the practice room, Lu Han snags Jongin's shirt, tugging gently to make Jongin fall back. Two dogs restraining each other, Jongin thinks, but he separates from Kyungsoo anyway, curious. Yixing seems to not mind being shooed off, and Jongin watches him slip between Kris and Junmyeon to find Kyungsoo, striking up what Jongin can only assume, with Yixing's limited experience with small talk, to be an argument about the price of second-hand cell phone parts.

"I don't want you to get the wrong idea," Lu Han says. He still has Jongin's shirttail in his hand, and Jongin finds himself wondering if Lu Han is, after all, older than him. Beijing, like the rest of China, was still developing their ballet program. It's different in Seoul—you could be a young dancer recruited to join a professional troupe. You could have people like Jongin. But good dancers— _young_ dancers—in China didn't do ballet.

"Kris has thought deeply about it the whole project," Lu Han is saying. "He may come off a little curt—"

"I don't mind," Jongin cuts in. Lu Han starts, and then stares at him. _Lu as in deer_ , Kyungsoo had explained over lunch, writing out tight, compact characters, and Jongin imagines Lu Han on a _glissade_ , melting away into the woods like Nijinsky in rose petals. But it passes in a blink, and Lu Han is suddenly normal, prosaic, just another mildly good-looking young man, a little thin, with a nose almost too small for his face.

"Okay," Lu Han says. He lets Jongin's shirt go, distant now that the conversation is over.

"Okay?" Jongin asks.

"Is copying others your thing?" Lu Han jokes. It comes off a little grouchy, like the other students telling Jongin, _I've never seen a combination like that before_. He decides Lu Han must be older, someone used to getting their way, not through playing cute but by merely _being_. But it's hard to say, he thinks. Yixing has the poise of a dancer who has trained for years, and Kris is undoubtedly older, or at least undoubtedly more fed up with the world. Lu Han wavered, like his body in an _arabesque_.

"You don't really seem the type," Jongin remarks.

"What type?"

"The type to explain your friends. I thought you'd be more…" Jongin shrugs helplessly, at a loss for words. _Careless_ , is what he means to say, but it feels too unkind for the moment, too judgmental. _More like me_ , he means, but years of casual competition and the small, disconcerting betrayals that dot the life of a prospective professional ballet dancer have made Jongin unwilling to give himself away so soon. He looks around impatiently, as if a word might materialize, and when nothing seems suitable, he settles for glaring at Lu Han. "I thought you'd be different," he finishes.

Lu Han laughs, shyly dipping his head as he surges ahead to where, as expected, Yixing is already waiting for him. "You're right," he calls over his shoulder. "I should have asked Kris to make Yixing your partner. Who wants to deal with a brat like you?"

 

 

+

 

 

The dance is easy, but practice is hard. They start the next day on the second act, the only one written with all four dancers. Junmyeon does show up with a swollen face and bags under his eyes ("I've streamlined some of the footwork," he says with a tired smile) and sets about furiously polishing the first act as Kris watches Kyungsoo, Yixing and Jongin run through the opening steps.

"It's weird to do this without an instructor watching," Kyungsoo mutters after he lands the first _grand jeté_ that marks the end of their _entrée_. "It almost feels too free."

Greg had bid them goodbye yesterday with a cheerful wave and the instruction, simply, to not slack off. _It'll be what you make of it_ , he'd said, eying Kris with something nearing appreciation. _And also why we chose Kyungsoo, to keep you guys on track_ , he'd joked. But Yixing seems to grimace when he processes Kyungsoo's words. He tests his _demi-pointe_ and does a little _pas de chat_ around Jongin, so that he's further away from Kris when he whispers, " _Duizhang_ is very strict. In Beijing, everyone is afraid of him."

Three hours later, soaked in sweat, frustration, and what feels like ink dust from the notation sheet photocopies, Jongin wishes Yixing had said something sooner, maybe when Jongin could still back out with a semblance of good grace. Kris works them over like a diamond cutter, forcing symmetry and sharper lines, never satisfied. Impatient and rough, he's the worst instructor Jongin has ever had to work with, and that includes Jaejoong, who once slapped Jongin across the face when he mistook an _entrechat trois_ for an _entrachet cinq_. Every misstep or unpointed foot makes Kris groan with a sound that seems torn out of him.

"The whole idea is to communicate with only your bodies," Kris explains, over and over. "You need tension, tightness. The whole act is about the tension between the dancers and how it binds them together." The brunt of Kris' comments falls on Jongin. "Put yourself in the role," he commands. "Connect with the others, pull away. I want to feel your confusion. You've found something only you can see. Would you just treat it like another casual acquaintance?"

All of this is true, but Jongin still finds himself fighting the urge to kick Kris in the face. Acting has never been Jongin's strong point. It surprised him, when he first started formally appearing in performances, how much of dancing was about acting. It wasn't enough to simply do the steps, to show the body in motion, moving from phrase to leap. "What is the motivation?" Siwon, the lead director for Jongin's first performance, used to yell. "What is the desire? You have to tell yourself, before you go on stage and tell others."

It doesn't help that Yixing moves like a knife thrown in the air, precise and always hitting just the right note. Even Kyungsoo, who has always been one of the more accurate dancers, can't keep up. Jongin chalks it up to Yixing having been with the piece for longer, but even the last-minute changes to the choreography show up in Yixing perfectly, like gold emerging from the mud of his body. Maybe Yixing simply understands Kris better as a whole, but Jongin knows that's just sour grapes.

By the end of the afternoon, they are still only through the _adagio_. Lu Han has been diligently memorizing his steps in the mirror to one side, occasionally smiling at Junmyeon, who has fallen asleep with his headphones on, still blaring the music Kris chose as accompaniment. Kris glances over with a grimace Jongin can't categorize as disgust or amusement, and calls a break. Finally off his feet for the first time in hours, Jongin collapses with his back against the mirror. He flinches when Lu Han presses a freezing cold bottle, fresh out of the vending machine, against Jongin's cheek.

"You look like you're enjoying yourself," Jongin bites out.

"It's my role," Lu Han tells him mildly, "to be nice to you before Kris dances you to death."

"You'll be sorry when I die before we go on stage."

"That's okay," Lu Han says, handing Jongin the bottle and patting the condensation away on his tights. "After all, it's not _my_ reputation here that's at stake."

Jongin bites down on his lip, hard, to keep from snapping at Lu Han. At the same time, Kris claps his hands and shouts, "Okay, one more time, from the _entrée_." Jongin has never been very religious, but today he looks at the ceiling and sends up a little prayer. It's going to be a long month and a half. Lu Han grins, curving his back in a barre stretch, like a diver priming for a back flip. His arm accidentally brushes against Jongin's, cool and dry against Jongin's overheated skin. Kris' voice echoes in Jongin's head, _does he worry that if he throws the illusion away, he'll lose something special?_

Jongin wants to scream at him, _how would I know?_ He has yet to see Lu Han dance in his role, and the whole afternoon feels like an exercise in expressing emotion to a void. He thinks of the first act, of the _fouettés en tournant_ he's expected to execute in perfect time with Lu Han, the fish dive in the unfinished third act, circled in Kris' messy hand with three question marks penned in ink next to it. He wants to pin Kris down, throw the notations in his face, and demand he explain Lu Han. Some sulky part of him wishes he could ask Kris to change Yixing and Lu Han's roles. Yixing, at least, dances with a straightforwardness that Jongin can understand. Lu Han is a black box that spits out bad jokes, fluent affectionate Chinese to Yixing, and the occasional passing glance at Jongin's reflection in the mirror. If Jongin could pare him down, trim away the inconsistencies, only then would Lu Han be something Jongin can dance towards.

Jongin grits his teeth, flexes his feet and, in a show of self-flagellating temper, extends into an _arabesque_ and leans down, even further, to touch the ground. With his conditioning and natural balance, nothing shakes, and each movement is smooth, fluid, controlled.

When he looks up, Lu Han has already turned away and is over by Junmyeon, shaking him awake.

 

 

+

 

 

He tears along the gilt staircase, breath hot against the shield of his black helmet. It's been a long time since Jongin's had to fight in such a quiet space, and the reverberation of each exhalation is louder than he remembers. He's paranoid, suddenly, that someone is sneaking up on him, taking advantage of his sensory blind spot. The easy answer, he knows, is to switch out of something so confining, or maybe to modify it so he can pick up slight sounds outside. But like most other things in Jongin's life, he has a fondness for doing things his way, the way he's always done it, even if it's not always right.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees something move and immediately snaps his gun in that direction, aiming while he jumps from a VIP box to a banister on the lower gallery. For once, something in ballet helps him in the arena: keeping his gun trained while moving is a hundred times easier since he knows how to spot. When he finally settles into a crouch, he realizes it's just one of the curtain tassels swaying in the breeze. Still, he doesn't put his gun away, and waits patiently for someone, anyone, to find him. The empty stage, framed on three sides with burgundy velvet brocade and finished with a hardwood floor so polished it can hardly be real, unnerves him, but he suspects it's just Baekhyun's idea of a joke. _When are you going to show me what you can do_ , Baekhyun likes to tease him, and Jongin wonders what the hell Baekhyun thinks it is that he can do. Maybe pick up an opponent and pirouette him to death. Or choke him with a pair of pointe shoes.

The one benefit of being chosen to participate in the exchange program is that the university suspends Jongin's usual class schedule. So for the second time that week, Jongin's at EXO, down in the arena levels, chasing down Peking Opera. The last two times at EXO, he'd come up empty-handed, without a single sighting of the red and white _lianpu_. It'd been disappointing, but if nothing else, the dream brawls gave Jongin a good way to work off his irritation and keep his intense desire to claw Kris' vocal cords out of his throat to a bare minimum.

He has a good feeling about today, though. Right on cue, the distant sound of a piano playing the kind of monotonous, vaguely classical music so popular with ballet teachers everywhere reaches Jongin, like a fog rolling into the auditorium. It's either a trap or a message, and Jongin finds himself tossing his gun in the air in lieu of a coin. He catches the handle, glimpses the little scratch on one side that means he's going to look for the source. It doesn't occur to him until he's already bounding up the emergency exit staircase that in shared dreaming, where you can control almost everything around you, chance is a bad bet.

Jongin knocks out a fairly stout, middle-aged man wearing a sick mask and a baseball cap near the ticketing booth. It's the only other dreamer he meets as he scours the theatre for the source of the piano music. Eventually, he runs out of entrances to and from the main seating area, so he stands very still, listening. The music disintegrates, fades, comes back strong, and most definitely originates from somewhere above Jongin. When Jongin turns around, the wall behind him melts into an emergency exit. He grins, checks his gun for ammunition, and opens the door.

What he finds is disorienting. The stairs curve around in flights and seem to extend way past what Jongin considered the first floor, where he had been moments earlier. Above him, the stairs dead-end below where the second level of the theatre had been, ending in a simple green-grey door, capped on the top by a green exit sign, the running man flickering twice like a coy invitation. Jongin takes a few hesitant steps up towards the exit sign, then thinks better of it and turns around to go further down. Within seconds, he rounds the corner and sees Peking Opera waiting for him.

"You made it," Peking Opera says, lips parting, lasciviously red.

Jongin pitches forward, but in an instant, the ground drops away from him and he is balancing precariously on the edge of a step, a tight grip around his neck, right under his helmet, the only thing keeping him from dropping. What Jongin had assumed to be stairs leading further down turn out instead to be an abrupt drop into nothingness. His whole body is turned around, painfully, by the hold on his neck. It constricts his throat, making it impossible for him to protest.

"Whoops, watch where you're going," Peking Opera says nonchalantly. 

"How did you—?" Jongin wheezes, clawing at Peking Opera's hand.

"Have you ever heard of Lionel Penrose?" Jongin tries shaking his head, doesn't get too far, and settles for trying to throw his body weight and right himself. But Peking Opera tightens his grip, and Jongin feels one foot almost slipping off the edge of the step, so he stops struggling. "I guess dance academy doesn't make you study a lot of Escher," Peking Opera continues, his tone conversational. "What you're standing on right now is a true-to-life example of the Penrose stairs. It's a staircase that loops into itself. Each part of the staircase is consistent, but the connections between them make the whole the thing inconsistent. So, you thought you were going down towards me." Peking Opera pushes Jongin's neck a little further, just enough for the vertigo to hit. "But to me, you were turning your back."

"Showing off," Jongin chokes out.

Peking Opera laughs, quick and silvery. "Yes, I suppose I am."

"I was waiting for you all last week."

"I know," Peking Opera says, chuckling. "I saw you. But I thought I'd give you a break. I heard you've been pretty busy lately, Billy Elliot."

So, Jongin thinks, satisfied, he was a good friend of Baekhyun's after all. "Never too busy," Jongin manages to say, "for you."

"That's the sweetest thing anyone's ever said to me," Peking Opera jokes. "Makes me regret having to drop you. And I guess," he says with a hint of malice, "I mean that literally."

By the time Jongin gets his breath back, he's already falling too fast for his body to handle, and he breaks his neck before he actually hits the ground. He wakes up panting, his hand wrapped around his own throat, as if trying to choke himself. He thinks that this is how addiction begins, by wanting the pain. Ballet was the same way in the beginning, when he relished the feel of dancing past the point of exhaustion. He pushes again, just lightly, on his throat, to relive the ache. It's not the same. His dreams that night are full of stairs, a smear of red and white, the threat of falling. They loop in on themselves, always ending at the same place, the emptiness rising up to meet him, lifting him, holding him close with a force that was almost affection.

 

 

+

 

 

As a general rule, professional dancers take about two weeks to learn a piece. School performances at K-ARTS usually take at least two months to learn, practice, and rehearse. For the exchange program, they only have up until the arts festival, which means they’re given a little over a month to put on "into your world". It makes sense: They have leeway to make stupid mistakes before the whole thing is staged, the piece doesn't have a part for a _corps de ballet_ , and no one is exactly expecting the next _Nutcracker_. But two weeks in, some pitfalls start to emerge, and between the four dancers and two choreographers, there's a weird sense that a month is just not long enough.

"And by pitfalls," Jongin mutters to Kyungsoo after his and Lu Han's third rendition of the fish dive fails to live up to Kris' critical eye, "I mean Kris is actively trying to kill me."

"Don't be too hard on him," Kyungsoo says, handing Jongin a towel for his sweat. "It's his piece, after all. He's very attached to it."

Jongin gnaws at the mouth of his water bottle, earning a stern look from Kyungsoo, who insists the habit will give him cancer. "Do you think it's possible he's an assassin sent by the seniors who are jealous of my success?" he asks, very serious, and Kyungsoo hits him in the face with his own towel, so disdainful that he can only express himself through petty violence.

Across the room, under Kris' watchful gaze, Lu Han is practicing a dive with Yixing. Jongin's not above feeling a twinge of proprietary jealousy over the scene: Yixing supporting Lu Han's waist and Lu Han experimentally hooking his legs over and over again on Yixing's back. The two of them have slipped into Chinese, the soft melodic drone of their voices cocooning them from everyone else. Even Kris, who stands to one side, has the air of someone unceremoniously thrown out from a circle. After a while, exhausted, Yixing lets Lu Han descend. His movements are graceful, each one intentional, but Lu Han fumbles somehow, falling from Yixing's support and tumbling to the ground on all fours, like a cat. They burst out laughing the minute he stands back up, and stop when they spot Jongin, who had run halfway across the room to try and catch Lu Han, knowing full well he'd never make it.

"My prince," Lu Han offers, smiling tightly. Yixing quietly withdraws, like he's giving Lu Han away, and Jongin mentally kicks himself for caring at all.

Compared to Yixing, Lu Han's dancing is nothing spectacular. He lacks the same accuracy of placement or awareness of his own lines. But there are moments where something emerges from the whole feel of Lu Han’s dance, an illusion of otherworldliness that even Jongin can't emulate. In those moments, Lu Han's dancing seems haunted by the promise of something more. He isn't incompetent by any means, and from the first time he and Jongin had danced together, they’d fit well. But it takes a few times, carefully watching Lu Han perform interlinked series of _pas de bourrée_ , so delicate he seemed to be floating off the floor, for Jongin to understand why Kris had cast him, and not Yixing, as the illusion. Nothing about Yixing had mystery. Everything was already out there, etched in the lines of muscle along his thigh, or the way he holds his spine stiff and perfect in an _à la seconde_ turn. But nothing is obvious in Lu Han's dancing. Sometimes it seemed to Jongin as if the dancing was a hidden part of Lu Han, and each step was a shedding away of his body, moving Lu Han ever close to the inhuman, incorporeal spirit that must be his true form.

Jongin has never been good at acting, but this side of Lu Han makes it easy for him to listen to Kris when he bellows, "Convince me that you've never seen him before, that you're surprised by his presence. Convince me that you see him even when he's no longer on the stage, that while Kyungsoo and Yixing are dancing to what is there, you are dancing to what you think you still see."

"Kris has a line for everything. You don't have to take everything he says seriously," Lu Han says, fidgeting with the waistband of his tights. It is after rehearsal, and only Jongin and Lu Han are left in the studio, trying to sort through Kris' comments for the platonic ideal he alone had of what the first act should look like. 

" _You_ don't," Jongin tells him as he collapses onto the floor, limbs finally allowed to be ungraceful. "But it's not your reputation with him that's at stake."

Lu Han laughs, like he's delighted Jongin ever listens to anything he says. That was the other thing about Lu Han, Jongin thinks as he turns over onto his side, watching Lu Han's feet move across the floor, toes scraping the wood. He'd never classify Lu Han as childish, but Jongin could never imagine the Lu Han who wasn't dancing to be the same one as the Lu Han who occasionally emerged when dancing. He was too easily amused, too playful. Jongin can't count the number of times he's seen Lu Han smugly steal food from Yixing or poke Kris during a particularly long-winded lecture, hoping for a bathroom break. He wonders if Lu Han has ever seen himself dance, or if maybe he isn't quite in control of the way he looked, like there really _was_ another Lu Han waiting in the wings.

The lights blink twice in the studio, then dim halfway. Lu Han halts in the middle of the _allegro_ and looks at Jongin, waiting.

"The university doesn't like dancers to stay this late," Jongin explains. He doesn't move from the floor, soaking in the faint sounds of Lu Han dancing, trying to guess which part of the choreography Lu Han is at. Maybe the part where Jongin rises from a crouch, and they move together, miming a symmetry they don't actually share.

"What do you do normally, then?" Lu Han asks. He comes over to where Jongin is sprawled on the floor and sits down gingerly, knees raised, feet flat on the floor, his hands behind him. That, too, looks like part of a dance, and Jongin absently runs through his meager repertoire of modern dance moves, thinks how he could bend and draw up Lu Han's body from the floor to cross the room.

"Sometimes I dance in the half-dark," Jongin admits. "But in about an hour, they'll actually shut off the lights. And then we'll have to go home."

Lu Han seems to consider this very seriously. Finally, he gets up, dusts off his legs, and offers Jongin a hand. "Let's go, then," he says. "I'm tired enough as it is."

For no reason at all, Jongin follows Lu Han all the way from the studio to the apartment he shares with Yixing. They get bubble tea along the way, chatting idly about places in Seoul Lu Han would like to visit, if they ever get a day off. "Bukhansan is nice," Jongin agrees. "I guess so is Namsan Park."

"We should go to Myeongdong together sometime," insists Lu Han. "And make Kris wear really silly clothes for our amusement. It's only fair."

"Would he agree?" Jongin asks, dubiously.

"Don't let him fool you," Lu Han says, laughing. "He loves shopping."

Yixing and Lu Han's apartment is a small, sparsely furnished one-bedroom with a small office they've converted to a second bedroom by shoving a bed up against the built-in bookshelves. The university provided the living arrangements, Lu Han explains, moving around the kitchen with the air of someone who usually lets someone else handle the hospitality. "Junmyeon put Kris up at his apartment," he continues, fussing around with some instant coffee, carefully reading the instructions for the measurements. "Up until then, one of us was sleeping on the couch."

"Which one?"

"Oh, we rotated. Which is only fair, I think." Lu Han hands Jongin a steaming mug, complete with milk, without asking. " _Duizhang_ 's a little tall for the couch they gave us though, so sometimes he just slept on the floor."

There's a small list of topics in common—video games, food, Kris—that they run through before, inevitably, the conversation comes back to dance. "Kris is a romantic," Lu Han says, very archly. "He grew up on recordings of Fonteyn and Nureyev in _Romeo and Juliet_ while the rest of us probably saw _Red Detachment of Women_ as our very first ballet."

"I don't even know what that is," Jongin admits.

"Oh, it's a Chinese classic. All of our parents know it. Whenever you tell anyone over the age of forty that you do ballet, they'll ask you if you still study _Red Detachment_."

Like all dancers, Lu Han's body seems poised to jump into a variation every time a dance is mentioned. He mimes throwing a grenade, then running away from the explosion in a series of _bourrée en couru_. When he catches Jongin watching him, he laughs, embarrassed. "Very silly stuff," he says, sitting back down and reaching for his now-cold coffee. "But our parents grew up on it. Yixing likes _The White-Haired Girl_ better, but only because he saw the Shanghai Ballet revival a year ago."

They pull out Lu Han's iPod. It's a mix of things: classical pieces, the music Kris chose for "into your world", Chinese pop ballads and, to Jongin's delight, Korean pop music, mostly by idol groups. "This one," Jongin says, thumbing to a song he thinks he recognizes. The beat is strong, stuttering, and Lu Han moves his shoulders and feet, miming what Jongin can only assume is the music video dance. 

"Some really popular girl group, right?" Jongin asks.

Lu Han laughs, doing a strange half-wave, half-jazz hand movement with both hands under his chin. Jongin doesn't get the joke. "You _would_ like them," Lu Han says, pretending to disapprove.

"I don't even know them," Jongin protests. "It's just that someone I knew used to make me listen to this song a lot."

"Ex-girlfriend?" Lu Han asks shrewdly. 

Jongin turns red and looks away. "Hmmm," Lu Han murmurs. "Let's listen to something else, then."

Actually, Jongin wants to say, it wasn't a girlfriend at all, just another dancer he'd met in an open workshop for contemporary hip-hop. It'd been about a year ago, after Jongin stressed his ankle past the point of discomfort and pushing towards permanent damage. That earned him another personal visit to Lee Soo-Man, who had ordered Jongin off his _demi-pointe_ and into alternative dance while he healed. Miserable, left out of the summer session performance, and unable to bug Kyungsoo, who was cast in an important secondary role, Jongin spent most of the time sleepwalking through his other classes and overworking the rest of his body by learning how to pop and lock. He'd picked up Oh Sehun along the way, first as a reluctant tutor and then as a pastime. Most afternoons found them listening to American top-20 hits or practicing handstands to Epik High, and they'd spent an extremely ill-advised evening drinking shitty beer at a party at Sehun's college and fooling around on the couch. But when the PT approved Jongin's return to ballet, Jongin had buried himself in it again, and after the fourth, tenth, fifteenth time he'd ignored Sehun's awkward attempts to arrange a time to hang out, the texts stopped coming. Jongin could blame it on the isolating world of professional ballet, but Sehun had phrased it best in his last text: _ur an asshole._

The moment for Jongin to explain comes and goes, so he just lets Lu Han switch to Tchaikovsky's "Serenade for Strings in C major." With the headphones stretched between the two of them, they can't dance too far apart. Lu Han does a salsa turn away from Jongin and, in a thin parody of MacMillan's balcony scene, scampers in tiny steps back to Jongin, his face very serious. Jongin puts his hands on Lu Han's waist. Lu Han complies, leaping up, and Jongin carries him in a boat lift across the kitchen. 

When Jongin sets him back down, arms shaking, Lu Han immediately jumps onto the kitchen counter, swinging his legs. "You know," he muses, "this is the longest time we've spent together."

"If you stretch the dance practices together," Jongin begins, and Lu Han interrupts, "Alone, I mean."

Jongin starts, but tries not to show it, pressing his hands against the countertop on either side of Lu Han's thighs. Somewhere, he's missed something in the conversation, dropped a line or a whole scene maybe. He thinks of Sehun, which bothers him—a year of disuse has rendered the memory of Sehun, mouth wet and swollen, into mere impressions, instead of a lesson Jongin can learn from. For all their touching at the studio, the faint hint of sexuality that lingers over their _pas de deux_ , this is the first time Jongin sees Lu Han as someone he might be interested in, if they'd met again as strangers. Lu Han's toes graze against Jongin's shirt as he kicks his feet. It's intimate, unasked for, and Jongin finds himself trembling.

"I should go," Jongin says eventually. He peels himself away from the counter and goes to retrieve their coffee cups from where they'd set them down to dance. 

"You don't want to stay the night?" asks Lu Han.

A beat. Jongin licks his lips, considers his options as he circles back around to Lu Han. He doesn't look up as he hands the cups to Lu Han. Finally, he asks, "Where would I sleep?"

Lu Han sets both their coffee mugs in the sink and, with as much care as he took in making the coffee, runs water over them. His arms arch to meet the tap, delicate as an _allonge_. "On the floor, I guess," he jokes.

"Pass."

"Then at least let's go sightseeing this weekend," Lu Han says, in a tone of voice that seemed to imply it was already settled. "Just the four of us dancers."

"Not just the two of us?" Jongin asks, before he can stop himself, and this time Lu Han is the one who halts, surprised. "Forget it," Jongin says hurriedly, shoving his shoes on and reaching for his gym bag. "I'll have Kyungsoo make an itinerary."

Lu Han jumps off the counter in a lunge, as if hanging in the space between him and Jongin are a thousand words he has to catch before he can say them. In the end, he says nothing, just waves at Jongin. The water is still running over their coffee mugs in the sink. Like a scene unfinished, a dress rehearsal missing its final staging, the weird atmosphere of Lu Han's kitchen seems to grab hold of Jongin, wanting him to make amends. Lu Han stands in the center, lit from an overhead bulb, like something offered for Jongin to inspect and claim, if only Jongin knew how.

So instead, baffled and not quite convinced of his own feelings, Jongin leaves.

 

 

+

 

 

"In retrospect," Jongin huffs as Lu Han turns the map on his phone another ninety degrees in the wrong direction, "we shouldn't have split with Kyungsoo."

It's Saturday, and Jongin and Lu Han are lost in Insadong. For the whole morning they'd been with Yixing and Kyungsoo, tea shopping and looking for souvenirs for Yixing and Lu Han's classmates back in Beijing. Just an hour ago, Yixing had pointed at a small stonework store and said, very seriously, "I want to buy one with a deer, so I can put a curse on it and put it under Lu Han's pillow," and Kyungsoo had offered to go with him as a translator. 

Thirty minutes later, bored and anxious from standing silently by Lu Han's side, Jongin had gone in to look for them and came back out empty-handed. Yixing wasn't picking up his phone, and Kyungsoo was the one who had the address of where they were supposed to meet next. "We could just go home," Jongin had suggested, fitting his baseball cap closer around his head, and Lu Han had given him a look of scandalized disappointment.

Now, Lu Han looks up from where he is mangling his map app and asks, indignant, "How do you know I didn't do this on purpose? Weren't you the one who wanted to go sightseeing, just the two of us?"

"That's not what I said," Jongin snaps back, embarrassed. "I didn't mean—I thought _you_ —"

Lu Han breaks into a peal of laughter, pointing at Jongin's face. "You have the best expressions when you're embarrassed." He slides his phone back into his pocket, rolling his shoulders and pointing his toes as if this were the beginning of another ballet and Jongin is his only spectator. "Come on," he says, "let's keep shopping. We're bound to find them eventually."

This, Jongin suspects, is a blatant lie. Thousands of people pass through Insadong on the weekends, and without Kris hulking over Yixing, both he and Kyungsoo would be impossible to find. But Jongin tags along anyway, as they move from stand to store to gallery. They pass the Asia Eros Museum without comment. Lu Han spends a long time forcing Jongin to follow him as he surreptitiously takes pictures of a toddler in a stroller. "You're going to get us arrested," Jongin hisses as Lu Han drags him into another alley to wait for the family, and Lu Han calls him a coward.

Most of their time is spent thumbing through endless plastic containers of phone charms. "I want a matching one with Yixing," Lu Han explains as he holds up two tiny glass horses in pink and gold. "What do you think of these?"

"You guys are really close," Jongin tells him. It's not really an answer, but Jongin's phone hasn't had a charm since his high school girlfriend made him get a Pororo figurine to match hers. He'd taken it off and hooked it on Kyungsoo's phone the second week of their acquaintance, and he hasn't replaced it since.

With each movement of Lu Han's fingers, the charms clink against each other, a tiny bell-like sound lost in the bustle of buskers and tourists brushing shoulders. Lu Han examines the horses critically, then puts them back down with a resigned sigh. "I'd probably break this one," he says, as if to himself, then more loudly, to Jongin, "Aren't you close with the people you dance with? Kyungsoo, for example."

"We're close," Jongin admits. "But we live together."

"In Beijing, I live with Yixing and _duizhang_ too," Lu Han says with an air of finality, and Jongin doesn't push it. They leave the shop, the twin horses still at the top of the phone charm pile, upright as if about to take off with Lu Han. Jongin thinks about buying them, but Lu Han grabs his wrist, the two touches of his fingers light and dry. "Don't get lost," he whispers, "or else I'll really be in trouble," and Jongin wants to point out, _you speak Korean_ , but doesn't.

They wind up at a Buddhist gift store around the corner. Jongin's interest in shopping has long faded and, mind drifting, he thinks back to rehearsal. Kris and Junmyeon, unable to agree on the ending of the third act, left Jongin with the burden instead. "I'm not a choreographer," Jongin had protested, but Junmyeon, shaking his head, pointed out that he didn't need to actually write any of the steps.

"Just interpret them," Kris said, handing over the final notations. "You'll be the only one on stage who will know."

Jongin has seen _Giselle_ —every dancer at his level has—but to him it's a story whose ending is already finished. _Think of obsession_ , Kris had murmured, while Junmyeon cajoled, _think of dedication_. Jongin doesn't know the difference.

"About what Kris is always telling you," Lu Han says suddenly. Jongin looks up, startled. Being surprised by things that Lu Han says or does, he realizes, is beginning to become an everyday occurrence. Lu Han fingers some tiny paper lanterns in the shape of lotus flowers hanging low from the ceiling. Against the lit paper, Lu Han's fingertips glow faintly pink, like he's drawing the light out of the lanterns and into his own body. Jongin watches out of the corner of his eye, waiting. "You know what he means, right?"

"About what?"

"About dancing and acting. You don't actually have to _feel_ any of the things you're pretending to."

Jongin jams his hands in his pockets. "I don't actually feel them. I mean, I do, but I—" With his eyes squeezed shut, he thinks back to the studio, Kris's gaze intent and searching as he hands over the notation sheets. Like he was entrusting Jongin with something very special, handing away some part of him that Jongin doesn't know how to respond to. Jongin had stayed up until three in the morning, thinking of the steps, whether the final jump, the final crouch, the final pose, knees bent, arms beseeching, was death or disillusionment. He'd never been good at this. _You dance like a machine_ , Yunho always said, _like something winds you up and sets you off, recklessly, into the world._

When he opens his eyes again, Lu Han is no longer there. Instead, standing in front of Jongin is a man in Lu Han's shape and size, wearing a wooden mask. Flat and crudely cut, it has none of the elegance or color of the _lianpu_ , but it is a mask all the same, and Jongin would never mistake who he is. "You can't keep living like that," Peking Opera says in Lu Han's voice. "You have to figure out what part of the performance is the stage, and what part of it is just _you_."

"What if that is who I am?" Jongin asks hungrily. "What if the stage is really all I have?"

Peking Opera doesn't answer. The question lingers between the two of them, brighter and heavier than a paper lantern, and somehow more real. _Maybe this is just a dream_ , Jongin thinks. _Maybe I will wake up and realize it's still Friday_. He's impressed by how clever, and how close to Jongin's life, Peking Opera must be to conjure up this exact scenario, to draw him into this particular labyrinth of reality and fantasy. Without his motorcycle helmet, Jongin is naked, too honest. Yet in this instant he thinks that there is no one who could possibly understand him better than this man, masked, silent, deadly. Jongin trusted Peking Opera to drop him off buildings, strangle him with wire, leave him gasping and vulnerable in the pathway of a summoned avalanche. This was the same, and in real life, just as painful.

But Lu Han takes off the mask, and the moment is broken. His face is neutral underneath. Jongin blinks and, as if coming out of a dream or breaking through the surface of an ocean and into the sun, wipes the back of his hand across his eyes, trying to clear his head. 

"I don't know," Lu Han says very simply, hanging the mask back on its rack and turning towards some personalized name stamps. "I guess that's what Kris wants you to figure out."

An hour later, they spot Yixing and Kyungsoo in line at an ice cream store. "Why didn't you answer your phone?" Lu Han whines as Yixing orders for all four of them.

"I forgot to charge it completely yesterday," Yixing explains, holding his phone out with a rueful shake of his head.

"You didn't call me either," Kyungsoo points out. He is talking to Jongin, narrowing his eyes as he hands Jongin some chocolate ice cream and a large stack of napkins. "We thought you ditched us on purpose."

Jongin puts his elbow on Kyungsoo's shoulder and pushes down. It's a familiar gesture, one that existed before Lu Han and Yixing and Kris came into their lives. Jongin weighs down on it now, hoping for comfort. None comes. Still shaky, he takes a bite of his ice cream to give himself a moment to think. "My phone ran out of batteries too," he lies. "I took too many pictures of you earlier wearing that hanbok."

Kyungsoo blushes furiously and reaches for Jongin's pocket. "I'm going to erase all of them," he warns, and Jongin laughs, beating his hand away with a spoon and yelping, "Then what am I going to use for blackmail?"

Behind them, Yixing and Lu Han have sat down at a table. During their time apart, Yixing has picked up matching phone charms of his own: two steamed buns, the angry one huffing steam for Lu Han and the beaming, angelic one for Yixing. "Is this how you see me?" Lu Han asks in mock annoyance as they string their charms on, heads bent together. They finish at the same time and admire their handiwork. 

_They fit just like we fit_ , Jongin thinks, his arm still slung around Kyungsoo's neck as Kyungsoo tries to keep Jongin from running into chairs and spilling his ice cream everywhere. He feels hot and restless, despite the breezy autumn afternoon. Lu Han doesn't look up, like he's forgotten Jongin and Kyungsoo are even there. Yixing is the one who waves goodbye when they split in front of the station entrance, his phone in hand, charm clicking against the hard plastic of his phone case.

"I wish it'd been you instead of Lu Han," Jongin tells Kyungsoo later as he settles into a stretch on their apartment floor. Kyungsoo is in the kitchen, putting away their groceries, but he falls silent at Jongin's words. After a while, when Jongin says nothing else, the sounds of cabinets and drawers opening and closing, of plastic bags being tied up for storage, start back up. Jongin imagines Lu Han's kitchen, the light falling on each strand of Lu Han's hair, his eyelashes, his toe lightly brushing Jongin's leg as he swung them in time to a beat Jongin couldn't remember. In his head, Kyungsoo and Lu Han blend together, jumping and turning from countertop to tile floor. Their image fades, replaced by Peking Opera, who tells Jongin with a smile, _only in dance is the next step always obvious_.

 

+

 

 

He pushes through a fallen tarp covering, almost smashing the cheap electronics and counterfeit purses of a nearby display. "Watch where you're going!" the vendor shrieks, pushing Jongin's legs out of the way. Jongin stumbles over, briefly considers shooting the man before he remembers—he's probably not even real, just one of Tao's background characters. Baekhyun had once called them NPCs: non-playable characters.

"Sorry," he mutters, feeling stupid. A few more shoulders bump past him, hard enough to bruise. The smell of fried food, waffles and kimbap wash over a vaguely concealed odor of ozone and trash. Jongin spins around wildly, trying to find his bearings. This isn't any street in Seoul he knows, but then again, like all good dreamers, Tao never builds from memory.

The alley winds its way into another passage, this one dark and unoccupied. Jongin steps in, shoulders hunched and wary, and is rewarded with a punch to the stomach, followed by an uppercut to the chin. It knocks his helmet off. The sound of it ricocheting off the walls, breaking free pieces of old brick and dirt that rain down on Jongin's hair, is deafening. "Fuck," Jongin shouts, trying to push against the stranger shoving him into the wall and scrabble for the helmet at the same time. A hand strikes him in the face, loud but not hard.

"Calm down," says the familiar voice, low in his ear. "I'm not here to fight."

When the stranger draws back, face finally in Jongin's line of sight, Jongin is surprised to see that, this close, the _lianpu_ is not face paint, but rather an actual mask. At first he thinks it's made of fabric, like a thinner ski mask, but instead it seems to be plastic, molded but not quite sitting on Peking Opera's face, so that every expression moves the marks of paint without any of the underlying features showing through. Jongin wants to reach up and touch it, to guess the material with his fingertips.

"Usually when people say they don't want to fight," Jongin pants, "they don't start with a gut punch."

Peking Opera chuckles. He grabs a handful of Jongin's hair and shoves back roughly, forcing Jongin to hit his head against the wall and expose his throat. "So this is what you look like under that thing," Peking Opera muses. Jongin imagines a hand touching his neck, stroking his collarbones in admiration. But Peking Opera has his other hand firmly twisting Jongin's wrist, trying to get Jongin to drop the spiked baseball bat he's holding.

"Didn't you know?" taunts Jongin. 

"Oh, I know everything," Peking Opera says, humming low in his throat as he threads his fingers through Jongin's hair. His hands are covered in thin leather gloves, as if his form was determined only by the shape of things covering him. He continues, "But it's better to see it anyway. More intense, in dreams."

Jongin pauses. His head is still spinning from where he was thrown back against the wall, and everything he thinks of saying sounds stupid. He lets the bat go, hoping to have his hand freed. But Peking Opera holds him down, smiling serenely, like they have all the time in the world.

"This isn't very private," Jongin jokes, jerking his head towards the mouth of the alley. "Next time, let's get a hotel room."

"We'll do that, eventually," Peking Opera says. Jongin hears, _in dreams_. Peking Opera shifts. Suddenly his knee slips between Jongin's legs, and he cants up, his expression unchanging. Jongin licks his lips. In Insadong, he had felt naked without his helmet. Now, it feels liberating, like he could say anything he wanted, without consequences.

He can. He does. He whispers, "I want you to take off your mask." When Peking Opera doesn't respond, he continues, "It's not fair with only me."

"That would be telling," Peking Opera purrs, "and it's against the rules."

Jongin bucks his hips, and they both hiss at the contact. It is sharp and good, a physicality that reminds Jongin of their bodies lying asleep elsewhere, of the very first time Jongin completed a _grand allegro_ without pause or criticism. "What do you want?" Peking Opera asks. "Do you want to fuck me? Or do you want to kill me?" His head is tucked into Jongin's shoulder. But even if Jongin could see his face, he’s sure there would be no expression.

"What if," Jongin breathes, "I want both?"

"That's the thing," Peking Opera murmurs. His lips are incongruously warm against Jongin's earlobe, through the material of his mask. "You can't have both."

He puts both of his hands around Jongin's head. They kiss, hard, not quite touching. Jongin tastes the surface of the mask. It's like nothing he's encountered before. Peking Opera's gloved hands against his face are brutal, tender, two measures of barely restrained power. Jongin wants them on his cock; he feels as if he could come from one touch only.

Then, Peking Opera twists.

He wakes up, as always, alone on his dreamcade cot. In the distance, there is a sound of another dreamer leaving. Jongin waits for their footsteps to fade, then comes out. "That's the seventh time you've finished in the bottom half," Baekhyun teases as Jongin pays for his time. "You're really losing your touch, Black Rider."

"That guy really has a thing for breaking my neck, huh?"

Baekhyun frowns, scratching the back of his head. He puts Jongin's money away without even looking at it. "What guy?" he asks. He's a good actor, so he sounds actually confused. 

Jongin grins. "It's okay," he says, reassuringly. "I don't want to know his name. But you should tell him, next time, I'll be waiting, with my mask off." Baekhyun stares back, unmoving. "Tell him I hope he'll do the same," Jongin says, and waves goodbye.

The night air is crisp, untouched. Jongin feels like the only person in the world who's alive, like the chilly air is his alone to break open and explore. In the dark, his body throbs, keeping him awake, aroused and buzzing pleasantly. His mind is full of questions, demands, the crushing feeling of something solid pressed knowingly against bruised skin. His desires are fatalistic, like struggling through quicksand.

 _What does he want?_ Kris had asked him that afternoon, as Jongin struggled over the last act yet again, the final firebird leap that ends with him crumpled on the floor, arms outstretched to the audience, pleading. _Does he want to lose himself in the illusion of dance? Or would that be giving in, losing the reality of dance?_

 _That would be telling_ , Lu Han chided from where he was watching, as always, leaning against the barre.

 _I want him to tell me_ , Kris had snapped back, and Lu Han withdrew, like a wounded animal, leaving without waiting for Jongin to finish.

All these questions, Jongin thinks. All these people who want him to draw lines, all these lines he can't draw. He knows his answer: that fucking is a kind of a death, that losing the illusion is just like dying. The ballet Jongin knows is all about reaching, approaching, the impossibility of a body moving against gravity. Nureyev had said something like that about dancing, borrowing a high _relevé_ to give the illusion of being on pointe. Jongin sees, now, the power of Lu Han's arms, spanning across the sink to turn on the water. His arms outstretched during a _fouetté sauté_ , reaching for Jongin. Those same arms, wrapped around Jongin's head, turning. Lu Han, taking off his mask. Peking Opera, lifting Jongin's helmet.

Jongin knows illusions, and knows these are both illusions. Lu Han is not Peking Opera, just as Jongin isn't Black Rider. But to dance, you live in the space between illusion and reality. It is not in a dancer to choose one or the other, but to toe between the two. That, Jongin is sure, is the only right answer.

 

 

+

 

 

Clubbing is Lu Han's idea, of course. "We have the whole day off tomorrow," he pleads when Yixing hesitates. "And we still haven't seen Hongdae."

"You'll get us all in trouble," Yixing complains. "Jongin's not even old enough to get in."

"I have a fake," interrupts Jongin, as he descends from a _petite sauté_.

Yixing, taken aback, finally turns to scrutinize Jongin. After a long pause, he asks, "Does Kyungsoo know?"

"I assume so." Jongin throws back his chin, rolling the defensiveness out of his shoulders as he grins defiantly back at Yixing. "Since one of his friends made it for me."

At last, giving in, Yixing takes a drink of water and considers the two of them. "I'm not covering for either one of you if _duizhang_ finds out," Yixing says. Then, as if remembering something funny but sad to himself, he adds, "Don't get lost."

Lu Han is well-researched, well-stocked with cheap soju and ways to convince Jongin to drink, and they show up in Hongdae well past tipsy. Lu Han's arm stays wrapped around Jongin's waist from the minute they get in a taxi and head towards Seogyu-dong, and Jongin's face hurts from the smirk that he can't seem to wipe from his face.

The club they descend on is blaring a techno beat so loud that Jongin almost fumbles his ID. The bouncer gives him a look that seems to threaten pain and amusement in equal amounts, but Lu Han drags Jongin inside by the waist, twisting him hard enough to give him whiplash. " _Xie xie_ ," Lu Han yells at the bouncer over his shoulder, who, taken aback, just barely manages to hand Jongin his ID before Lu Han throws both of them onto the crowded dance floor.

"This time you really _are_ going to get me arrested," Jongin screams at Lu Han, his mouth smashed into Lu Han's jaw.

"He probably doesn't even remember your face," Lu Han screams back. Jongin tries to say something else, but almost immediately Lu Han is lost in a group of women wearing different variations of the same black zippered dress, who pit him violently against the one foreign girl in their midst.

Lu Han is in Yixing's grey v-neck and a pair of tight black pants. Before leaving, he'd borrowed Jongin's baseball cap, and wears it now cocked at an angle, like Jongin had taught him. With his skinny shoulders, well-built arms and good sense of rhythm, Jongin could mistake him for an older b-boy, someone who would hang out with people like Sehun on the weekends. Jongin wants to watch him from a distance, but the crowd keeps jostling him closer to the group, and eventually he gets roped into dancing with one of the girls whose left arm is covered in tattoos. "Do you want a drink?" she yells at Jongin, thrusting her beer at him, and when Jongin shakes his head, she brings it to his face anyway, tipping it back. He drinks to keep it from pouring onto his face, and spends the next fifteen minutes checking himself critically for any sign of being drugged.

"Your friend's cute," another girl says, right into his ear, her lip gloss leaving a sticky mark on the rim.

"You're cute too," he tells her, because he thinks that's what expected.

Jongin catches snippets of conversation around and directed at him—Yonsei, birthday, boyfriend, cool. Each song blends into each other, and the lights make all the girls, except for the foreigner and one of them with a half-shaven head and pink hair, look identical. Without learning names or faces, Jongin finds the dancing oddly mechanical. He amuses himself by dusting off what he learned during his time off from ballet, which gets him roped into a dance circle, then a dance-off, which he loses with grace. Three girls want to take a picture with him, each pressing her lips to his face. One of them has a boyfriend, who good-naturedly offers him a bar napkin so he can wipe the lipstick print off his cheek.

He develops territorial feelings towards his spot on the dance floor, afraid to wander too far and lose sight of Lu Han. "You new to this?" an older man asks, slightly angrily, when he notices Jongin stalling, and Jongin nods, relieved to be understood. The only song he recognizes is an abrasive remix of "Gangnam Style", which has everyone, including a reluctant Jongin, galloping not quite on the beat.

Eventually, he pushes through to where Lu Han is trying with frantic hand motions to explain something to a shirtless young man next to him. The young man keeps nodding and pointing at Lu Han's hair, like he's trying to barter for it. Jongin cuts in between them, surreptitiously elbowing the young man away, and screams, "Are you ready to leave?” in Lu Han's ear.

Lu Han turns into his mouth, almost kissing him. "Yeah, I'm having a great time," Lu Han laughs, clearly mishearing Jongin, and with a proprietary pat on Jongin's ass, disappears into the crowd again, leaving Jongin with the shirtless young man, who silently offers Jongin a swig from a bottle of vodka.

In Jongin's imagination, this night goes differently. He'd forgotten how noisy, how crowded, how pointless the whole clubbing experience was. He'd done this once before, for someone's birthday, and enjoyed it more for the novelty than anything else. Annoyed, he moves from the dance floor to the bar and surveys the scene, picking out Lu Han's faded grey shirt with frustrating ease. He'd imagined it—well, he doesn't quite know. Like in the movies, he and Lu Han would dance and everything around them would slow down, fade into a photographic glow. Just the ravings of a teenager, he thinks, as the bartender passes him a beer that was clearly meant for someone else. Kyungsoo would have warned him about this, if Kyungsoo had known.

He's still sulking drunkenly when Lu Han finds him. "Bored?" Lu Han says. Jongin can't tell if the music has been turned down or if his ears have just gotten better at discerning speech from the loud, incessant dubstep bassline. "You want to go somewhere else?" Lu Han tries again, flicking the condensation off Jongin's stale glass of beer and drawing little lines of water down Jongin's exposed neck. It’s a childish gesture, completely at odds with everything else in the club. For some reason, Jongin finds it endearing, almost cute. He thinks of the first time he met Lu Han, the coy and shy boy that chose to hide behind Yixing rather than apologize.

"No," Jongin says slowly. He pulls Lu Han down by the arm, close enough to kiss. Lu Han's face is perfect from this distance, shining slightly in the green strobe light, his eyelashes twice as long in the half-dark. "I want to dance with you," Jongin says, forming each word clear and loud so Lu Han will hear him.

"You dance with me all the time," Lu Han jokes, but he doesn't try to pull away when Jongin puts both hands on Lu Han's waist and gets up.

They stand there, hip to hip, not looking at each other. Swaying awkwardly, not even to the beat, Jongin takes in the damp feel of Lu Han's shoulder, sweating through the thin t-shirt, the way his ribs expand to fit the air in his lungs, how skinny he is under his clothes. He tries to compare it to Peking Opera pressed against him, and can't. After a while, Lu Han rubs his nose fondly into Jongin's neck. "I feel like I'm in middle school," he admits, cracking himself up.

"Hey, asshole," Jongin snaps, embarrassed, "I'm trying my best, okay?"

"Okay," Lu Han says, still laughing. He presses his lips against Jongin's ear, and Jongin feels a shiver start, like a tremor building up to an avalanche. "Don't be mad," Lu Han pleads.

"I'm not," Jongin tells him. _I'm scared_ , he wants to say.

Another round of tequila shots from the first group of girls, then another group of girls. Lu Han's dancing gets clumsier; Jongin's, friendlier. A few Yonsei language students zero in on Lu Han as one of their own, their Chinese fast and greedy as they buy Lu Han another drink. "I have to—"Lu Han begins, in Korean, before he throws his head back in a laugh and follows it up with something that sounds like " _dee dee_." Jongin moves towards him, but a man in a glitter jacket, wearing a facemask with studs, butts shoulders with Jongin and accuses him of stepping on his toe. In the confusion and mutual apology that follows, Jongin loses Lu Han.

He blacks out in a toilet stall and wakes up with a start in a taxi, his head against Lu Han's shoulder. "You were drooling," Lu Han whispers, brushing Jongin's bangs clumsily out of his face and almost poking Jongin in the eye. When Jongin wipes at his mouth, Lu Han giggles.

"Where are we?" Jongin mumbles. The last thing he remembers doing is admiring the synchronized dance moves of five guys in the center of the dance floor, cat-calling along with the spectators next to him. "They're the new trainees," a too-skinny girl with pitch-black eye makeup like a ghoul had shrieked at Jongin, "from the YG family." He nodded, uncomprehending. Minutes later, one of the dancers had puked only a meter away from Jongin.

Now, he feels stiff, inflexible, like he's been bent in this position for a long time. He looks down, pats his jeans. He still has his fake ID, the money folded in his back pocket, his house key. His shoes are beer-soaked and, strangely, covered in glitter.

"Headed back to the apartment," Lu Han tells him, as if there were only one they shared.

The apartment is empty when they stumble in. Drunkenly, Jongin wonders if maybe Lu Han had lied to him about Yixing living here, or maybe he had hidden Yixing in a closet somewhere, out of the way. The image makes him laugh, and laughing makes him slightly nauseous. Lu Han helps him with his shoes, fumbling the laces, and together they toss their sweaty clothes, Jongin's simple black tank and Yixing's t-shirt, into a pile by the foot of Lu Han's bed. They tumble, Jongin first, onto Lu Han's bed, limbs tangled easily.

"Are we going to sleep together?" Jongin whispers. Lu Han shakes his head. Less drunk, or maybe simply better at being drunk, he slips away from Jongin, landing lightly on his feet as he rolls off the bed. Jongin gets up on his elbows, feeling desperate. His head spins and sends him back down on Lu Han's pillow, stupid and drunk. "Why not?" Jongin asks.

"Not enough room," Lu Han jokes.

Jongin frowns, shaking his head. "That's not what I mean," he slurs. 

"I don't want to," Lu Han whispers back. Jongin's stomach drops. Then, even more softly, like the silence was a person in the next room they're trying not wake, he adds, "Not right now."

Jongin’s eyelids are too heavy. He lets them fall and counts his heartbeats, shallow, like the beats of an _entrechat_. Lu Han leaves, comes back again, a comforting weight on the bed next to Jongin. Everything smells like Lu Han, who presses a glass of water against his lips. Jongin shakes his head, trying in vain to grab Lu Han by the waist and keep him there. His hand brushes against Lu Han's stomach. Lu Han lets out a breathy laugh and twists away, but lies down next to Jongin on the bed, on top of the sheets. Fading in and out of dreams, Jongin can feel more than hear Lu Han singing to himself in another language, " _tsuki no stage ni odoru, kimi wo yume mitanda_." His warmth rises and falls with each exhalation. Jongin wants to see his face, to touch it and know it isn't plastic. His body is somewhere far away, dreaming. Eventually everything is silent and still, and he is asleep.

 

 

+

 

 

When he wakes up, he's alone, naked, in Lu Han's bed. A cursory glance of Lu Han's bedroom turns up none of his clothes. The contradictory smell of eggs frying and fresh coffee wafting from the kitchen makes him more hungry than sick, though his head pounds uncomfortably, as if he was still at the club, the bassline thumping through speakers at a distance.

"I closed my eyes when I took off your pants," Lu Han tells him when he pads out into the kitchen, wrapped in Lu Han's sheets. "So if you're saving yourself for marriage—"

"Don't be stupid," Jongin growls.

Lu Han is making fried eggs and rice porridge. When Jongin opens the lid of the pot, peering in confusedly, Lu Han smacks his hand away. "There's toast if you want it," he says, pointing to the refrigerator, then the toaster. "But congee is what I eat when I'm hungover."

"Did I do anything stupid yesterday night?"

Lu Han raises an eyebrow, still watching the frying pan with curiosity, as if this were his first time watching an egg cook. "Don't you remember?"

"Yeah," Jongin admits.

Lu Han takes a deep breath, then flashes Jongin a tight smile over his shoulder. "Good," he says, going back to stirring the porridge. "Sit down while I finish this?"

Jongin does. It's something he does often with Kyungsoo, too—sitting on the kitchen stool and, hawkish and hungry, watching Kyungsoo dice vegetables or break noodles into a pot. The sounds of the pot bubbling and the oil sizzling wash over Jongin like a warm bath, drowsy and familiar, and he's startled when Lu Han's voice breaks through, asking, "How do you feel? You were pretty drunk last night."

"I'm not trying to apologize for anything," Jongin mumbles. He reaches for the mug of coffee, but Lu Han, without turning around, smacks his hand with the back of his spatula and points to a second cup a little further off by the coffee machine. Jongin reluctantly gets up to retrieve it. "Anything I said, I meant. Even if I was drunk when I said it."

"Like the part where you said Kris was the finest specimen of man you'd ever met and you wanted to ride him like a buffalo?" Lu Han asks, keeping a straight face.

Jongin glares, hurt. "I'm serious," he snaps.

"So am I," Lu Han retorts.

In the silence Lu Han moves the pot off the heat, serves himself a bowl of porridge and stirs preserved radish from a foil package into the rice. He hums tunelessly, scratching the back of his ankle with his feet. In boxers and an oversized t-shirt, waving his spatula like a conductor's baton, he is unlike the Lu Han in the studio who gazes at Jongin before they leap into twin _jetés_ , or the Lu Han out of the studio who can't stop having footsie wars with Yixing over late night _tteokbokki_. Jongin wonders if there is a Lu Han that belongs only to himself, if this is a peek at him. Something special, given just to Jongin for the morning.

When Lu Han finally speaks, he is in the middle of flipping over an egg. "You know we're not the first time your university and mine have swapped dancers?" He glances over his shoulder at Jongin, who shakes his head. "Last year they sent this dancer to Beijing. I think his name was Chanyeol. Park, maybe. Park Chanyeol." 

With a chopstick, Lu Han pokes his egg in the center for doneness, and slides it from the pan onto a plate. He pours more oil into the pan and breaks another egg. The pause feels like an invitation for Jongin to say something, and he offers, "I didn't know him."

Lu Han pops the chopstick in his mouth, waving away Jongin's comment. "Well, _duizhang_ and him became really fast friends," he says, teeth gritted around the chopstick. "They were always together, eating, dancing, doing the tourist stuff. _Duizhang_ even took him down to Guangzhou to meet his family. You can imagine what Yixing and I thought of that."

"You guys are worse than _ahjummas_ ," Jongin grunts. Lu Han pokes his tongue out at Jongin and, in the process, drops the chopstick on the floor.

"Back then, _duizhang_ didn't have enough experience to write a whole piece," Lu Han continues, "so he was just supposed to do a short for Chanyeol to perform at the talent show at the end of the year. He obsessed over it. Even more than this one."

"Really? I find that hard to believe."

"Really. Everyday, he was working on this piece. Going over it with Chanyeol, rewriting the footwork, choosing different music." Lu Han pauses, thinking. He bends down to pick up his dropped chopstick and throws it cavalierly into the sink. "I think he had built it up in his head, that it would be a perfect representation of this friendship he had with Chanyeol. Or maybe deeper than friendship. It was a _partnership_ , like in the _wuxia_ novels, you know?"

Jongin shakes his head. Lu Han laughs, a little ruefully. "I guess you've never read a _wuxia_ novel. Anyway, the thing was, Chanyeol wasn't at all the right dancer for the piece. It went over terribly."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. No one is quite sure. Yixing and I once sat in on rehearsals, and it was abysmal. _Duizhang_ couldn't explain how he wanted the moves to look, and Chanyeol couldn't execute them the way they were explained. They were fighting all the time, quietly, which is really the worst kind, not talking to each other but sort of—" Lu Han thrusts his spatula, like a fencer with his epee, at Jongin. "Talking at each other, is the best way I can describe it. In the end, Chanyeol just did the best job he could at the talent show and flew back to Seoul, without any of us even seeing him off at the airport. Everyone afterwards said Chanyeol must have stolen _duizhang_ 's girlfriend or something, there was no other reason for them to blow so hot and then so cold."

The other egg done, Lu Han reaches blindly above his head for a plate. Jongin gets up and hands it to him, trying to keep his sheets away from the sputtering oil. He gets a pat on his head for his trouble.

"The funny thing is, I don't think _duizhang_ really meant to fight," Lu Han continues. "It was more like he couldn't see Chanyeol for who he was. He'd written this piece for someone else, someone who only existed in his head. Someone he thought he understood Chanyeol to be. And that image got so warped and twisted until it was like this third party in their relationship." He smiles wryly. "In Chinese, we call that _xiao san_. Little three."

"Why are you telling me this?"

Lu Han looks at him. For a second, Jongin thinks Lu Han is going to slap him. The moment passes. "No reason," Lu Han finally says, his voice very level. "I thought you might find it interesting. The piece that _duizhang_ wrote is what he cannibalized for the third act of ours, you know. Just a little background," he adds waspishly, "to round out your dancing."

They eat in silence, Lu Han occasionally slurping at his congee, unselfconscious. In the middle of breaking open his egg, Jongin is hit by an intense dizziness, and eats the rest of his breakfast on the couch, still bundled up in Lu Han's sheets like an over-large baby. He offers to help Lu Han with the dishes, but Lu Han waves him away, only coming back to refill Jongin's coffee. "My mother would kill me," he says lightly, "if I let you help me."

Afterwards Lu Han puts on a CD that he painstakingly explains is a mix Yixing made for Lu Han's birthday. "He plays guitar too," Lu Han explains, his eyes lighting up. From a corner he drags out Yixing's guitar and starts thumbing the strings. "He's been teaching me," Lu Han says, and plays a chord. 

Something in Jongin flares up and burns, like the memory of the shot he took last night with Lu Han at the bar, arms entwined. The way Lu Han had shaken his hair out of his face, pressed his wet lips to Jongin's ear and said, _let's dance then_. "About what you were saying," Jongin begins. Lu Han stills, but doesn't stop fiddling with one of the tuning knobs, avoiding Jongin's gaze. "I'm not Kris," Jongin insists. "I'm not writing your steps for you, so I promise, I won't get confused."

Lu Han laughs, shaking his head. "That's not the point of the story, Jongin," he chides. "Don't misunderstand me."

But he puts the guitar down and leans over the couch anyway, close enough to Jongin that their foreheads are touching. They look at each other for a while, assessing. Ballet, Jongin knows, is nothing like life. Relationships, casual fucking or otherwise, don't happen in planned parts, a variation for each person and a coda to wrap everything up. Still, Jongin thinks, if the hallway was their _entrée_ , if the performance is to be their _adagio_ , then surely Lu Han telling him Kris' story is his variation. It is Jongin's turn now, to answer it. He thinks of Peking Opera, two measures of brutality by his head. He puts his hands on Lu Han's face, two measures of tender hesitancy. He closes the distance. They meet in the center, perfectly together, as if moving to a beat that no one, not even the two of them, can hear.

 

 

+

 

 

Jongin's first major solo role was in a ballet reinterpretation of _Carmen_. It was written with him in mind by Lee Taemin, one of the older students who had himself been a student at K-ARTS before going off to the KNBC. "Toreador, to dearest" was presented as part of KNBC's young dancers program, along with two other short ballets. It was that performance alone, Lee Soo-Man had said, that put Jongin on the K-ARTS fast track.

In "Toreador, to dearest", Jongin appears on stage, shirtless, wearing what looks like a red train, overflowing with ruffles and fabric. His opening steps are like a tango, firm and lacking grace. Eventually he flows into a complicated pattern of glides and twists, the dress opening up behind up, in front of him, at each lift of his arm, like a sea of roses. As the music builds, Jongin tears off the train in pieces, gathering it in his hands, arranging it as he dances so it develops a life of its own, almost human as it sways with Jongin's steps and jumps. He brings it to his face, as if inhaling it, then pushes it away from him. In the end, it falls to his feet, inert and cold, as Jongin, chest heaving, completes a series of _fouettés en tournant_ around it. His hand is held aloft at the end, like a matador calling for applause. But, as if shot, Jongin suddenly collapses, draping himself, a man broken, on the folds of the dress. In every performance, the final image is so unexpected that it takes the audience a full minute to summon up the courage to applaud.

After the first performance, Taemin had come to Jongin backstage and pressed his face to Jongin's chest, as if he couldn’t bear to see Jongin's face. _How do you know to dance like that, at your age?_ he'd asked, sounding almost angry. _What do you even know about desire?_

The truth is, even now, Jongin knows nothing about desire. Sex, lust, attraction, he knows those, or at least some form of them. But nothing prepares him for Lu Han, and all the various forms in which Jongin wants him. Lu Han, dappled in sunlight, patches of beige and yellow and white all over, as he throws Jongin's washed clothes to him. Lu Han, head cocked like a cautious animal, examining Jongin with fierce concentration before breaking into a run, meeting Jongin halfway, arms raised, neck flexed, ready for their fish dive. Lu Han, winking at Jongin over Yixing's shoulder, his pinkie finger brushing against Jongin's arm as they part. Lu Han, asleep with his head cushioned against Jongin's side while Jongin puzzles through theory assignments, Kyungsoo's notes crumpled under Lu Han's elbow.

With Lu Han, Jongin suddenly feels his age, all puny eighteen years. He wants to learn how to be tender, how to cherish this first thing as if he could compare it to anything he’s lost. He wants to dive into it and know how deep he should go, what parts of Lu Han are inviolate and what parts he can invade.

They sleep together for the first time on a weekend, while Yixing is away getting groceries. For all the build-up, the sex itself is easy. They fall into it as if it is the most natural thing in the world. Jongin wonders if he should worry that being dance partners is harder than letting Lu Han slip two fingers in him, working him until he's mere muscle and movement tucked into the creases of Lu Han's sheets. But instead he comes and comes around Lu Han's fingers, lets Lu Han fold him, torque him, bend him until he is satisfied. He is young, he is inexperienced, he is hungry for it, and he tries to give back everything Lu Han feeds him.

 _You're dancing better_ , Kris tells him at rehearsals, and Lu Han ducks his head to hide a smile.

"Do you have any weird kinks?" Jongin asks one day, tracing his hand up and down Lu Han's side, the hips made as if by divine intervention for a perfect turnout, the thin bony shoulders. "Like, I don't know, do you want to watch yourself or have me pee on you or something?"

"What?" Lu Han laughs, twisting to look at Jongin. "Do you really put having sex in front of a mirror in the same category as watersports?"

"Who taught you how to say this stuff in Korean?"

"You're jealous," Lu Han sings out, delighted. "What, are you worried that I'm learning dirty words from someone else?"

"I just figure, you know," Jongin mutters. He gestures helplessly to the two of them naked on Lu Han's narrow, well-kept bed. "You must have _something_."

He regrets the words the moment they leave his mouth. It's unspoken, but somehow obvious to both of them, that the most recent person besides Jongin that Lu Han has slept with (and, Jongin thinks, biting his lip, is possibly still sleeping with) is Yixing. It's Yixing's civility that gives him away, the way he only seems to disapprove of Jongin in situations where he's sure to lose and Jongin can fully defend himself. Kris, too, teeters constantly on the verge of saying something to Jongin, and Jongin can sense that it's not words of approval. On his more petulant days, Jongin imagines himself as a mere bed-warmer, someone to pass the time in Seoul. On his better days, Jongin thinks of himself as transient.

Lu Han takes a long time to think about it, then shakes his head. "I don't. Really, I—all the people I've ever been with, none of them wanted me to do anything unusual." He tucks himself into Jongin's chest, ungainly but gentle. "Then again, I haven't had that many opportunities."

It is perfectly plausible, of course, that Lu Han would have a boring sex life. But to Jongin, it seems impossible. Jongin thinks of afternoons with Peking Opera in the dream levels, the one time they met in a hotel lobby filled with glass pillars and Jongin had fucked him on broken glass, their skin resisting the shredding through sheer force of will. The time Peking Opera had stripped Jongin's senses and sucked him off in the dark, a perfect blindfold as only dreams could provide. The time they'd raced each other to the top of a mountain and fucked in a falling car, crashing into the sea below. Was it all just acting out fantasies? The urge strikes Jongin sometimes, to pin Lu Han down and tell him there are ways to approximate that kind of sex, without the violence. He thinks of dragging Lu Han to EXO, both of them going under without the masks. But the mirage of Peking Opera, pulled over Lu Han like a veil, is something they never talk about.

 _What could you possibly know about desire?_ Taemin had asked when Jongin was sixteen. Then, Jongin had wanted to ask Taemin why he had written the piece for him, if he didn't think Jongin could understand. But he thinks now that if he could jump back in time, he would have performed "Toreador, to dearest" differently. He had been too dramatic, too brutish with his opening steps. It was a dance about being José and Carmen both, and, younger, before Lu Han, he'd only seen José in the piece. Now, he thinks about the different ways one might present desire, as both the thing wanted and the thing wanting. Now, he thinks about Lu Han gasping for air as he comes, Peking Opera gasping for air as they both emerge from the water, incandescent and untouchable. He thinks about wanting one or the other, and wanting both, and being wanted.

 

+

 

 

He races up the steps to the roof, wishing there was an easier way to mow down his opponents—all uniformly dressed in suits and sunglasses, and thus probably a figment of Baekhyun's imagination—besides shooting them in the head, one at a time. It's a dream, so the minute he thinks of it, a machine gun appears in his hands, slightly warm, as if it'd just been spitting bullets for someone else. Within minutes, the stairwell is empty. Jongin wipes his face, smearing dust, blood mist and gunpowder along his cheek. It's not an attractive smell.

Besides Peking Opera, the roof of the 63 Building is empty. The sky is an unreal patchwork of green and blue, with clouds tinged slightly pink. Peking Opera is sitting on the rail, kicking his feet. When he hears the sound of the stairwell door open, he raises his head, the _lianpu_ a dirty white in the strange light.

"You stopped wearing your mask?" he asks.

Jongin shrugs. "Only when I come to see you."

Peking Opera grins. Jongin imagines the sound of the mask crinkling at the corners of his eyes, where the smile translates to lines. But at this distance, and with the wind, it's impossible to say. "What do you do on the days when I'm not here, then? Hope?"

"You're always here when I need you to be," Jongin tells him. It comes out more tenderly than he means it to, and he wants to add, _and you're rarely not here_ , but he's interrupted by the sound of a gunshot whipping through the air.

As if in slow motion, the bullet pierces the mask, drills through the eye, and exits the back of Peking Opera's head, too cleanly, no blood or bone. The mask seems to harden around the bullet, then shatters. Slowly, Peking Opera tips backwards, hands releasing in shock, legs still bent, one foot pointed properly, like a dancer. Jongin is turning his head to look at the shooter—a tiny girl with a gun, wearing, bizarrely, the face of a much older actress as a mask—but his body betrays him and propels him toward the railing, screaming soundlessly. He doesn't make it in time, and Peking Opera's hand slips from his grasp, just as a second gunshot sounds and a small flower of pain opens up in the back of Jongin's head. 

He pitches forward. They fall soundlessly, parallel, and forever separated. For a second, Jongin feels he is accelerating, but it is only the blood leaving his body, trailing like a twisted umbilical cord behind him. His eyes widen. It is as if everything is very clear, very obvious. Yet it takes Jongin a long time to understand what he sees, descending at a tantalizing distance from him.

Staring up at him from the crack in the _lianpu_ is, undoubtedly, Lu Han's eye.

 

 

+

 

 

The hour it takes Jongin to get from EXO to Lu Han and Yixing's apartment gives him plenty of time to think about all the reasons he should have suspected the truth. The first thing Lu Han ever said to him, of course, but also the way he knew Jongin's schedule. The time they kissed in an Insadong alley, as recounted in a dream. The way they moved from wariness to intimacy, to the physicality of touch. Peking Opera's body, lithe athleticism, how he jumped like a dancer from one hit to another. Lu Han's story about Kris comes to him now in sharp, fresh relief: it wasn't a warning, after all, but a poorly rendered confession. He had wanted Jongin to see him for who he really was, both awake and in dreams. He'd been too afraid to hurt Jongin as he did in dreams, wantonly, without consequence.

 _I'm ready_ , Jongin wants to say. _I've always been ready._

Lu Han is in the kitchen, boiling water in two small pots. The counters around him are covered in opened instant ramyun packages. "Good timing," he calls out without even turning around when Jongin bursts in, shoes still on. "I was just about to call you. Yixing and I are doing an instant noodle taste test, and we need a third person for a tie-breaker."

"How did you get back so quickly?" Jongin blurts out. "Did you take a taxi here or something?"

"Taxi?" Lu Han asks. "Back from where?"

"From Sinchon. From," Jongin hesitates. He's never said EXO's name out loud, and with Yixing staring at him like he's a lunatic, he compromises. "From the dreamcade," he says instead. "You were just there."

There is a long pause while Yixing puts down the tin of tea he was carefully measuring out to brew. Lu Han laughs a little nervously, but, waving his chopsticks at Yixing, as if passing on the responsibility of dealing with Jongin, he goes back to the stove, breaking a square of ramyun noodles and throwing a half into each pot of water.

"Jongin, are you feeling okay?" Yixing asks, moving to feel Jongin's forehead.

"I'm talking to Lu Han," Jongin says, tearing furiously away from Yixing. "Lu Han, explain to Yixing—"

"I've been here all afternoon," Lu Han calls out, his tone light. "Just in this apartment. I had a call from my mother and then I sent Yixing out to buy all the ramyun we haven't tried yet and—"

" _You were there_ ," Jongin shouts. He crosses the kitchen in three strides, takes Lu Han by the shoulder and squeezes. Surprised, Lu Han drops his cooking chopsticks on the ground, and, as if by instinct, Yixing bends down to pick them up and dust them off. Jongin ignores him, shaking Lu Han by the shoulders. "You were in my dream," Jongin hisses. "Wearing a Peking opera mask. You've been there for ages. I saw you today, clearly, when you got shot."

"Jongin," Lu Han says, his voice very small as he glances pleadingly at Yixing, "I have no idea what you're talking about. I've really been here all afternoon."

Jongin lets out a loud growl of irritation and pulls up Lu Han's sleeve, exposing a long tract of untouched, unblemished skin. It stares back at him, leering. Jongin's own left arm is pockmarked under the wrist by tiny pinpricks of scar tissue, from where the sedative is injected into his skin before a dream. It's possible, he thinks wildly, that Lu Han could get the injections somewhere else: his waist, his legs, even his neck, where his hair could draw attention away. But when he draws back Lu Han's hair, pulls up his shirt, and examines, closely, Lu Han's exposed ankle, he finds nothing.

"Jongin," Lu Han breathes, touching Jongin's face with a trembling hand. "You're hurting me."

In the silence, the pots bubble, then overflow. The smell of the chili powder in the soup base is strong and distinct, and the hissing of the water hitting the gas, putting it out one little drop at a time, is like the sound of someone's—Jongin's—heart breaking.

 

 

+

 

 

The first thing that Jongin thinks is, _contamination_. He isn't sure which he means, the kitchen where Lu Han stared at him, uncomprehending, or Lu Han looking back at him from behind the _lianpu_ , patiently dying. Either seems unthinkable. The sound of the water boiling still bubbles in Jongin's mind, one of those little hooks which memory revolves around. It coalesces, collapses, splinters into others: Lu Han's feet landing against the floor upon which Jongin's head lay, the tinkling of a piano while Jongin's feet slipped against the Penrose stairs. All lines are the same, and Jongin can't draw them. They loop into themselves, churning endless repetitions of Lu Han's kitchen and, tangled, ensnare Jongin in them.

He gets on the bus towards Sinchon, then, impatient, gets off and takes a taxi the rest of the way there. In the dark, the gaming complex where EXO is located shines sinisterly. The rest of the entertainment center chimes moodily as Jongin hurries through it, following him with the dry sounds of palms hitting joysticks, old _Tekken_ machines chirping and humming chiptune melodies. It's the setting of a movie, or a movie as recounted in a dream. Jongin's face itches for the motorcycle helmet, to hide away.

"You were here earlier," Tao says when Jongin shows up at the reception area. Despite having known him for months, this is the first time Jongin has heard Tao speak directly. So it's the first time he realizes, painfully, that Tao speaks Korean like Lu Han, like Yixing and Kris, rounded and slightly clipped at the ends.

"I need to do something," Jongin says in one long exhale, heart racing.

Tao pushes aside the magazine he was flipping through and gazes up unhappily at Jongin from under his long black bangs. For someone his size, with his deep voice, Jongin finds that the impression he gives off is more helpless than menacing. "You know the rules," he says slowly, as if still sounding out the syllables.

"Please, Tao," Jongin begs. "I don't really even need to go into the arena level, just—I thought I met someone there and now—"

"Oh," Tao says and stands up, suddenly brisk. "It's about _him_."

Tao takes them to a room Jongin has never seen before, a small, dentist-like office with two reclining chairs and a small travel-sized PASIV neatly packed up. He motions for them to sit down. Jongin does and, wordlessly, Tao shoots them both up. It feels different from the sedative Jongin normally receives, more subtle, the contrast between aged and new wine. "A different kind of sedative," Tao explains as the edges of the room melt away. "More pure, for more intimate dreams."

They are in Tao's dream. Jongin has been in enough of them to know, instantly. But standing next to Tao is Peking Opera, mask whole and untouched. He waves cheerfully at Jongin, then stands there, waiting, while Tao walks around the two of them silently, face expressionless.

"I don’t understand," Jongin spits out. "Why would you lie like that to me?"

"Rude brat," Peking Opera sneers. "What are you talking about?"

Tao stops between the two of them and, like a mother might with an unruly child, tussles Peking Opera's hair—soft, cut unfashionably, clipped at the neck like a dancer. "This one is my projection," Tao says, somewhat apologetically. Peking Opera immediately stills, like a machine turned off. "I don't know what he was like with you."

"Take off your mask," Jongin demands. He lurches forward, but Tao puts a large, firm hand at the center of his chest, and pushes back. "I deserve an explanation," Jongin tells both of them. "I want to know."

Tao heaves a deep sigh. Something very complicated happens to Jongin's body. Suddenly they are back at the top of the 63 Building, the clouds overcast and green. "Your turn," Tao tells him. "Summon him."

"I don't understand." Jongin gestures to the man behind Tao. Tao's hand is still in Peking Opera's hair, oddly protective. There is no expression on either one of their faces, and Jongin inhales sharply, trying not to cry. 

"He's right there," he pleads. "Let me talk to him."

"No, not this one," Tao says again. "Your projection."

"I don't—"

"The man you fought with," Tao insists. His face twists in frustration. Jongin thinks, painfully, of the way Yixing would sometimes turn to Lu Han for help, and Lu Han would wrinkle his nose, looking for the right Korean words. Tao wrinkles his nose now, and then, relieved, eyes bright, says, "The man you were in dreams to find. The one you see all the time."

Suddenly, unmistakably, Lu Han is there, his arms wrapped around Jongin's waist, his chin digging into Jongin's shoulder. He smells of kimchi ramyun, of instant coffee. Jongin feels his cheek, smooth and dry, on the skin of his neck and almost cries out in relief. "Hello," Lu Han murmurs, voice husky. "I heard you were looking for me."

Tao narrows his eyes, takes his hand away from Jongin's chest. He hesitates for a moment, then pulls off Peking Opera's mask. Lu Han's face shines underneath, but differently—like a death mask of Lu Han, and Jongin flinches away. He tries to turn to see the Lu Han behind him, but Lu Han tightens his grip, keeping Jongin there.

"Your projection is very real," Tao says, nodding appreciatively at the Lu Han behind Jongin. "The strongest one I've seen yet." With a flick of his wrist, Peking Opera disappears, and Tao summons another mimeograph, a Lu Han dressed in a heather grey t-shirt and jeans. "Almost like real," Tao suggests.

"What do you mean, almost?"

Tao tilts his head, bird-like, wondering. "Baekhyun didn't tell you about projections?" he asks. Lu Han stills around Jongin's body. A sudden thought occurs to Jongin and he looks down at Lu Han's wrists. There, tucked into the crease of his elbow, sit a tiny cluster of needle pricks, like an unfinished tattoo. He touches them with his fingers, wondering.

"Projections are what dreaming is made up of," Tao continues. "Stronger. They are what people want."

"Like, what? Genies? Fairies?"

Tao shakes his head. "Maybe delusions? Ghosts?" Again, the nose wrinkling in frustration, before Tao gestures to Jongin, hand tracing the curve of Lu Han's arm. "Like this one."

"He's a shared dreamer," Jongin points out.

"No," Tao says quickly. "Like this one, not quite real. You made him. "

"Lu Han is real," Jongin snarls.

"Yes, Lu Han—" he pronounces the name perfectly, in the lilting tone of Lu Han's native Chinese, "is real. But this man isn't. He's just a projection."

"I fought him. I've been fighting him. For the last month. In the brawl—"

"There was no fighter," Tao tells him stiffly, as if insulted. "Your imagination."

Lu Han breaks into a laugh. Jongin relaxes, convinced an explanation is coming. But instead, Lu Han slips out from behind him and goes to Tao's side. When he turns to face Jongin, there is the same wrongness in his face, like he's a screen with emotions flickering on a two-second delay. "Try asking yourself," he says in Peking Opera's voice, "was it possible Lu Han would have gone to a dreamcade in his first week of being in Seoul? How did he know when you would be there? In an arena as big as the ones for brawling, how did he find you every time?" Lu Han's eyes narrow. For the first time, his face twists into an expression Jongin has never seen—cruel, questioning. He presses his lips, mouth closed, against Jongin's, and leans back.

"Why didn't he say a word about EXO the whole time you fucked?" Lu Han whispers, his teeth nipping against Jongin's lips with each consonant he sounds out. "Why didn't he want you to know?"

Jongin swallows, mouth dry and stuck with the taste of Lu Han so close. "You were embarrassed," he whispers back.

"No," Lu Han murmurs. He presses his mouth to Jongin's ear. Hip to hip, bodies closed in on each other, they sway to a beat no one hears. "Lu Han isn't Peking Opera," he echoes.

It is a thought Jongin has never said out loud before. Lu Han says it exactly the way Jongin hears it in his own head, and, instinctively, Jongin counters, "I'm not Black Rider either."

Lu Han laughs, quick and silvery. His hands are claws on Jongin's shoulders. Jongin thinks of the way they've ripped him apart, held a gun, pressed a knife to his throat, dropped him down an endless flight of stairs, twisted his neck. He thinks of Lu Han, up top, tender as he closes Jongin's eyes. "And I'm not Lu Han either," this man says. When he backs away, his face is replaced by the red and white _lianpu_ , a covering of face paint this time, not plastic. Then, as if being wiped clean, even that disappears, leaving nothing but blankness, like soft, untouched clay waiting to be formed.

Jongin pushes away from him and leans over the railing, heaving. Nothing comes out, because it is a dream. The scenery melts away, Lu Han melts away. They are back in the tiny office, lying on old-fashioned reclining chairs, the edges of the world sharp and dingy and too real. Jongin is still heaving, and this time, he actually does vomit.

"In this world, nothing is impossible," Tao says. He folds his hands in his lap, like he is trying to keep himself from reaching out to Jongin.

"I don't want impossible things," Jongin whispers. He wipes his mouth on the back of a shaky hand and tastes disappointment in the acid. "I thought he was real. I thought what I wanted was real."

"Every dreamer does," Tao tells him. He smiles, sadly. "It's why you come here, after all."

 

 

+

 

 

For the next few days, Jongin lives in his dreams. Baekhyun won't let him come back to EXO, and when Jongin tries to bargain with him, Tao ends an arena game early and comes out to stand behind Baekhyun, an ominous and strangely mournful shadow. "Dreaming's not the solution, Billy Elliot," Baekhyun cajoles. "You're our best customer. I don't want to have to ban you." 

When Jongin starts to turn away, Baekhyun slumps over the counter, his arms extending past the edge, waving frantically at Jongin as if he could be moved by jazz hands alone. "Come on, forget the whole thing and let _hyung_ buy you dinner. I'll even throw in some soju, if you keep your age a secret."

His eyes look like they're begging Jongin to agree, but his mouth is curved in the same wry smile as always. Not for the first time, Jongin wonders how old Baekhyun is, or if he's going to look this way forever: sometimes sixteen, sometimes twenty-seven, sometimes forty. He imagines the parade of losers and dreamers and wrecks that Baekhyun has seen dash themselves against dreams and come away broken. He imagines that after a while, all the stories sound the same.

But EXO is not the only dreamcade in Seoul. There are worse ones, ones where the dreams come like nightmares, murky and uncontrollable, ones with sedatives that make Jongin vomit blood when he wakes up. Ones that are therapeutic places for drug addicts, ones that are themselves drugs for addicts. Jongin settles on one called M2, run by a slim young man who goes by the name of Jino and lets Jongin sleep on his couch, even use his shower. "You're in a bad way, man," he tells Jongin, passing him day-old kimbap rolls, and Jongin ignores him for the most part, though he's thankful.

Resurrecting an illusion is harder than summoning one for the first time. The first few Lu Hans that Jongin constructs are faded versions of the mimeographed one: voiceless, expressionless, a machine wound up for Jongin's sick pleasure. Eventually he learns that it's easier to summon Peking Opera and not talk. They spar, they wrestle, they fuck. When the illusion is too thin for Jongin to bear, he summons what little he can make of Lu Han, and they dance.

"I could stay here forever with you," Lu Han tells him, eyes bright, and Jongin wonders which fantasy he is living, the one where he stays in a dream with Lu Han, or the one in which Lu Han stays in the dream with him.

 

 

+

 

 

He is dancing the black swan _pas de deux_ with Lu Han when his left cheek caves in. The world warps suddenly, pain and shock exploding like fire and eating away at the projected film of Jongin's dreams. Lu Han stands, unmoving, in the center. He is the last thing to disappear, and Jongin's disintegrating fingers touch his eyes, his lips, before fading into fluorescent light.

When the glare clears, Kyungsoo is staring him in the face. Behind him, slightly embarrassed, is Baekhyun, who is having a conversation under his breath with one of the M2 technicians.

"Shit," Jongin mumbles, rubbing the ghost of the punch from his cheek. "That really hurt."

"Good," Kyungsoo says, drawing his lips together tightly. "It was supposed to."

"How did you find me?"

"Jino is an old friend of mine," Baekhyun chimes in. "So when Kyungsoo asked, I put out some feelers and one thing led to another."

"How did Kyungsoo know to ask you?"

"I've always known," Kyungsoo snaps. "You were never very good at lying."

Jongin is too tired to feel surprise. He hasn't eaten for days, subsisting on energy drinks and Jino's charity. Kyungsoo pulls him up by a rough hand around his waist. It is a thin parody of the night he went clubbing with Lu Han. The memory, one he's never tried to relive, is too painful to think about. He tries to fall back asleep, but Kyungsoo slaps him, softly, just enough to get his attention.

"We're all worried sick," Kyungsoo tells him, maneuvering them toward the exit. He has a hard time looking Jongin in the eye and seems to be intensely focused on making sure their feet stay in step. "Kris threatened to call the police. I think Junmyeon lost most of his hair when you didn't show up for practice for the fifth day in a row."

"I'm not dancing anymore," Jongin tells him.

"Don't be stupid," Kyungsoo hisses. "You just need some rest."

The bus rocks under Jongin. He falls asleep, cheek pressed into Kyungsoo's shoulder. In this dream he is a little ship on turbulent water; Kyungsoo is trying to bail water out of his broken hull. _I love you_ , Jongin yells through the storm. The rain washes Kyungsoo's face off, and Jongin is falling through the water, wrecked. The remains of the sedative in his veins make the dream too intense. Jongin wakes up screaming, and Kyungsoo hurries the two of them off the bus, not meeting anyone's curious gaze.

The apartment is exactly as he left it a week ago. Kyungsoo sits him down at the table and hands him a bowl of reheated kimchi spaghetti, covered in cheese, the way Jongin likes it. He's too tired and, paradoxically, too hungry to eat. But Kyungsoo is watching him anxiously, his hands twisted on the table, and it hurts to see him so on edge, like he could break at the first sign of refusal. So Jongin forces down a bite. "I thought you weren't going to cook for me anymore," he grumbles, pulling strands of cheese away from his fork to avoid looking at Kyungsoo.

"I'm not," Kyungsoo tells him, wiping at his eyes angrily. He isn't crying, as far as Jongin can tell, but his eyes are red. "I'm not, you bastard," he says again. He spastically wrenches the fork from Jongin's hand and, as if suddenly exhausted, leaves it hanging between the two of them, like a broken bridge.

"I'm sorry," Jongin whispers. Kyungsoo doesn't look at him, fiddling with the fork and dropping it on the floor. "For making you worry," Jongin adds, bending down to pick it back up.

"You're selfish," Kyungsoo fumes. "You're stupid, you don't think about anybody. Director Lee almost expelled you, and I think you deserve it." Then, more quietly, "I wish you had just told me."

"I'm sorry," Jongin whispers again. He closes his eyes, thinking about Lu Han. So many Lu Hans, laid out like infinite possibilities before him. _Choose me_ , they are all saying. _I'm sorry_ , he says to each one of them in turn. He is looking for the one that is real, only none of them are real. He wants to explain this to Kyungsoo, but he can't. The smell of the kimchi spaghetti, strong and distinct. The sound of someone's heart breaking. He feels a thousand years old, and empty of all tenderness. 

Kyungsoo touches his hand, tentatively, fingers cold, and Jongin lets him.

 

 

+

 

 

Even though Jongin has missed all but the last dress rehearsal, Kris and Junmyeon are surprisingly human about his reappearance. "It happens," Kris says, shrugging. Jongin wonders if this is what happened with Chanyeol, if Kris considers himself a martyr to this dance, if he lies awake at night thinking it will haunt him forever. It's a mortifying thought, and Jongin bows his head, ashamed.

They run through the dance in full costume, with the orchestra. Jongin fumbles a few steps, but the weeks prior spent memorizing keep his body from failing him. Kris cuts it short before they reach the _bravura_ measures. Junmyeon, like an anxious mother, watches Jongin's face the whole time. "You'll be surprising all of us with the ending at the performance," Junmyeon says, as if this is the silver lining. "It'll be a unique experience."

A week of not practicing has rendered his steps stilted, but not rusty. Kyungsoo works through the moves with him. Every hour is dedicated to the dance, to learning Junmyeon's new footwork, to learning from Yixing's clean, polished lines. Each moment spent not dancing is devoted to avoiding Lu Han. Kyungsoo tries, conspicuously, to leave them in a room together, but at the last minute, Jongin finds some excuse. 

"It's just dancing," Jongin tells Kyungsoo, clenching his teeth. "That's all we need to get along for."

"I just want the two of you to make up," Kyungsoo says, biting his lip.

"We don't need to make up," Jongin tells him, holding Kyungsoo's elbow tightly. "He didn't do anything wrong."

Jongin knows the fault is all his. He suspects that despite that, Lu Han still blames himself. But Jongin still doesn't have the words. He is still too bone-tired, still too afraid, to look Lu Han in the face and not see Peking Opera or the faceless monstrosity Jongin loved for a week in his dreams.

He senses that Kyungsoo is waiting for the right time to sit him down and give him a lecture about his actions, or at least what Kyungsoo thinks are his actions, and he does his best every time the conversation turns serious to move on to the insubstantial: food, Pororo, the new Chinese words Kyungsoo learns from Yixing. At night he sinks into dreams, unconnected ones, some featuring Lu Han and some merely snatches of feeling and desire. It's what comes of abusing the sedative cocktail for a week straight, Jongin knows, but it feels like a purgatory he has to break through, like an alcoholic pushing through withdrawal, to get to clarity.

The day of the performance, it's Kris who has the most stage fright. He paces the dressing rooms, unable to talk to anyone, merely making strange grunting sounds and offering awkward thumbs up as encouragement. Junmyeon conveys orders from him like a translator, Lu Han and Yixing stay hunched together, as useless as furniture, and Kyungsoo is the one who hurries everyone from place to place, a born manager.

Jongin is left relatively alone during the backstage preparations. The isolation is like a glass case, or ice freezing Jongin out of time, suspending him, casting him off. The make-up artists, two theatre majors, are freshmen who have heard too many rumors of Jongin's eccentricity to talk to him. Their touches seem to only ghost along Jongin's face, like caresses through silk, and he stares back at them stonily. "It's just how he deals with stress," Kyungsoo lies, heading Lu Han off by pretending Yixing called for him, but Lu Han keeps his eyes trained on Jongin's face as he's led away. 

Act I opens with only Jongin on the stage, an echo of Act III, which ends the same way. Jongin stands backstage, waiting for the curtain to rise, when a hand brushes Jongin's back.

"Don't turn around," a voice says, so low it is almost mere vibration. "Just—stay there for a moment."

Jongin wants to turn around and look. In his mind, it is Lu Han. In his dreams, it is still Lu Han. The memory of the roof of the 63 Building comes back to him, the taste of ashes and bile, the tenderness of delusion. But if he turned to look, if it was someone else, if no one was there, he knows the illusion would break. Now is not the time. He needs the illusion now, more than ever. He tries to school his expression, to not betray any weakness. The touch expands through his body like a frost, covering him, melting around him, a fever sweat breaking. Each breath he takes is pure, almost sacred. He remembers: the first taste of smoke, his ribs breaking under a touch, an _arabesque_ stretched out between heaven and hell.

"Don't think about anything," the voice tells him. "Pretend you're still in a dream."

The curtain lifts, one breathless inch at a time. The hand disappears. Jongin lowers his head. There is nothing out there that can hurt him, as long as he dances. In the dark, there are endless possibilities. The movements come to him not through the filters of Kris or Junmyeon's words, not from the memorized notation sheets, not from the memory of Lu Han, his arms wrapped around Jongin's waist, drawing him away from the others, but unadulterated. 

He thinks, _this must be the thing that dreams are made of._

He thinks, _on the stage, nothing is impossible._

Now, he is not Black Rider. He is not even Kim Jongin. He dances with a Lu Han that is Lu Han and is not Lu Han. It makes no difference. This moment is his life; he performs it. Lu Han beckons him from the shadows; it is the real Lu Han, the one that is not real.

 _But I don't want impossible things_ , Jongin prays, hoping for understanding.

Lu Han smiles, mysterious, strange, incorporeal, and Jongin, knowing nothing else, goes towards him.

 

+

 

 

September in Seoul is not yet cold, but in his costume—loose-fitting pants and nothing else—Jongin is chilly, standing on the roof of the auditorium building. He is suddenly nostalgic for high school, when he had spent a few months indulging in a stupid smoking habit. He doesn't miss the cigarettes at all, but there's something uncool, he supposes, about standing on a roof and musing on life, if you didn't have a smoke.

"You missed our encore," Lu Han says, shutting the roof door behind him. "I had to dance with Yixing."

"You dance with me all the time," Jongin tells him, not turning around. "For once, Yixing should get some credit."

"I dance with Yixing all the time, in Beijing," Lu Han says with a snort. "That's not what we came to Seoul for."

In his mind, Jongin had imagined many ways he and Lu Han could start talking again. In tearful breakdowns, or Lu Han getting angry, or Jongin writing a long soul-bearing letter of apology. Which was stupid; he'd never been good with words. Realistically, he should have expected this, for Lu Han to surprise him, calm and so damn reasonable. Jongin resents it, but he knows it makes Lu Han the better person, or at least the more mature one.

"How did you find me?" he asks.

"Kyungsoo guessed. He said you really have a thing for roofs." Lu Han settles down into a crouch next to Jongin and puts his arms against the railing, leaning hard enough so that the metal leaves a rounded mark across his skin. "I never see the appeal. I'm afraid of heights."

"In my dreams—" Jongin stops. He takes a few deep breaths, but the words still don't come. Finally, he pretends to cough and says gruffly, "Actually, I'm not sure I can talk about them."

"It's okay," Lu Han says softly. "You don't have to."

There are so many things Jongin wants to tell Lu Han. He knows that once Lu Han goes back to Beijing, he'll spend days, weeks, even months reliving the time they'd spent together, trying to separate his delusion from the reality of it, to divine some sense of how it would have gone, in another world, if Jongin hadn't been a dreamer. All dancers are obsessive; Jongin knows that isn't a crime. But he's not ready to say any of the vague, half-formed thoughts: _I'm sorry I didn't see you for who you are. I'm sorry you weren't the thing I thought you were. I should have dreamed— I shouldn't have dreamed— you were the one thing—_

He knows, though, the one thing he has to tell Lu Han before he leaves. "I didn't sleep with you, " Jongin says, each word a struggle, "just because of them." A pause. "The dreams, I mean."

It is a long time before either of them move. Then, Lu Han stands up, leans a little over the railing and, lightning-quick, turns around, reclining his back so that he and Jongin face opposite directions. There is a moment where Jongin, absurdly, wishes they were back in Lu Han's kitchen. In dreams, he thinks, he could do that. But they are no longer in a dream, and all that is over. The air smells cool and of leaves, a damp muted scent, entirely unlike kimchi. Jongin moves his weight from one foot to another, uncomfortable.

"The last variation," Lu Han says, breaking the silence. "I only got to see it from backstage. What did you decide?" He turns to look at Jongin. "Does the main character choose illusion? Or does he choose reality?"

His smile is neither cruel nor gentle. This, Jongin knows, is the Lu Han who makes jokes with Yixing, the Lu Han who teases Kris, the Lu Han who first told Jongin, _who wants to deal with a brat like you?_ Jongin thinks that, in the end, this is still the Lu Han he loved the most.

"He doesn't know what he chooses," Jongin says, tearing his eyes away from Lu Han's face. "So he stretches his hands out, beseeching the audience to understand." He reaches over the railing, towards Gangnam, towards Sinchon and EXO. "Both choices are untenable. Both are lies."

"Jongin," Lu Han says, voice dropping, "I'm really glad I met you. I want to dance with you again." He pauses, tapping his nails against the railing. They both take a breath, release it in time. Lu Han continues, "But you're going to kill yourself, if you live like you're always on stage."

Insadong, in an alley, with a mask over his face. Jongin tries to remember what he had said then, and can't. He's lost in the blood haze, the sound of a dented baseball bat falling to the ground. He gropes in the air, once, twice, then lets his hand drop. "What if," he says, very slowly, "I don't know anything else?"

"You don't have to know," Lu Han says. "You just have to make the choice to learn."

They fall silent, Jongin contemplating Seoul from their height, Lu Han looking up at a sky Jongin can't see. Eventually, Lu Han pushes himself away from the railing. He trails a hand down Jongin's back, a quick dry touch. Jongin wants to ask him about the moment, backstage, before they were on, if it was all his imagination. He doesn't. Lu Han crosses the roof and opens the door. With his back turned, Jongin can't see him leave. He imagines Lu Han taking the stairs, one at a time, all the way down. Lu Han waiting for Jongin to follow him, waiting, and waiting, and finally giving up. Lu Han finding Kyungsoo, telling Kyungsoo that everything was okay, ignoring the look on Yixing's face, going out into the crowd and shyly bowing to the praise, packing his bags, getting on the plane, leaving Jongin here on the roof, alone. Each image is clear, distinct, inviolable. Packed tight, like a bullet, to travel far from Jongin, and they drain from him now, bloodless.

He thinks of that last moment with Peking Opera, the mask shattering to reveal Lu Han's face, serene as only a dreamer—or, perhaps, as only a dream—could be when facing death. _I'm afraid of heights_ , Lu Han’s voice echoes, as Jongin, fearless, leaps up to sit on the railing. But Jongin hadn't known at the time, couldn't have possibly guessed that the real Lu Han would never stage a battle at the top of a building. Looking back now, it was a sign, just like all the others. Red herrings, false starts, truths only Jongin knew about himself. A slightly more sadistic form of therapy, that was all. 

From this height, the cityscape below looks like a thin, painted cloth, unreal and stretched taut. He wonders if he would fall through if he jumped, or if it would vault him back, back to the roof, back to the stage, back to the very first moment he met Lu Han and back further still, to when he imagined Lu Han into existence. To Jongin, suddenly, reality is such a fragile thing. Lu Han is somewhere down below, waiting. Peking Opera sits on the railing beside him, waiting. If this were a dream, Jongin would be the only one who could see them both. It is not a dream, and, eyes open, he doesn't see either one of them. 

_Dreams feel real when you're in them_ , Baekhyun had said, but it's not dreaming that confuses Jongin now. He swears that if he closes his eyes, he can reach out and touch Peking Opera, press his face into that blue jacket, and taste the things his dreams are made of: cotton, sweat, gunpowder, Lu Han dappled in the sun.

 _What do you want, to love me or to kill me?_ Peking Opera asks him now.

 _You can't keep living like you're always on stage_ , Lu Han tells him now.

But these are lines he didn't, and still doesn't, know how to draw. Maybe one day, he will have to face them instead of running. For now, he is tired, muscles aching from the performance, sweat dried against his skin like ill-fitting armor. In his head, he hears Kris' voice, joined with Junmyeon's: _Only you know what you mean the ending to be_. So, body relaxed, feet pointed, he pushes himself off the railing. For a second, he hangs in the air, weightless. He is a line stretched between two poles, the space between the leg and floor as one teeters out of a _développé_ , the first dancer to ever perform a _sissone fermée en arriere_ , rising slowly, falling slowly, not sure where to land.

He does, with his eyes closed, with both feet on the ground.

Then, silently, he makes his way down. 

**Author's Note:**

> "turnout" was written for [fumerie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/grisclair/pseuds/fumerie) and was intended in part to be a tribute to her fic, "[Arbitrage](http://archiveofourown.org/works/597770)". It is far less in scope and intricacy, but one must acknowledge one's inspirations, and beg forgiveness. I hope this fic gave her just a little of the joy and entertainment she has given me with her writing.
> 
> Since I myself am not a ballet dancer and didn't have a beta on hand who was one, I did my best to get as many details right as I could, but happily welcome any corrections for mistakes I made. In preparation for writing this fic, I read Barbara Newman's collection of essays/interviews, _[Grace Under Pressure](http://www.amazon.com/Grace-Under-Pressure-Passing-Through/dp/0879109955)_ , as well as [Julie Kavanagh's biography of Rudolf Nureyev](http://www.amazon.com/Nureyev-The-Life-Julie-Kavanagh/dp/0375405135). Both are really fascinating works. The anecdote about Nureyev stealing a high releve from ballerinas to give an impression of being en pointe (all his life he was plagued with the notion that his legs were too short to be truly perfect) is actually from Kavanagh's book.
> 
> I did not write about "into your world" with music in mind, but I imagined the last act, especially Jongin's bravura measures, to be set to something resembling "[Kaifuku suru kizu](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAbJ2LZn_HU)", from the "All About Lily Chou-Chou" soundtrack. I made a mix to go along with this fic ([here](http://8tracks.com/twoif/you-come-to-me-in-dreams-and-i-try-to-answer-them)), and "Kaifuku suru kizu" is one of the tracks, if you'd like to hear it that way instead.
> 
> The description of Taemin's work "Toreador, to dearest" is based off the Carmen-inspired work featured in the title story of _Seduce Me After the Show_ , by est em. In "Seduce Me After the Show" it is a tango dance, not a ballet, but it is performed by an ex-Bolshoi ballet dancer. The song that Lu Han sings when Jongin is falling asleep is, of course, DBSK's "Bolero". The song that Sehun favored and Jongin chooses from Lu Han's iPod is, of course, TaeTiSeo's "Twinkle".
> 
> PASIV, projections, and all other dream-related terms belong to Christopher Nolan's "Inception". Black Rider, incidentally, is the nickname given to Saito while he's in the dreamcade, in the opening pages of the Inception prequel "[The Big Under](http://inceptionmovie.warnerbros.com/deviantart/thebigunder.pdf)". I didn't have "Black Swan" in mind when writing this story, but in retrospect, it seems obvious, doesn't it?
> 
> Both _Red Detachment_ and _White-Haired Girl_ were model ballets performed in the 1960s in Communist China by the National Ballet of China. They differ from traditional occidental ballets, as they often double as operatic musicals and incorporate elements of folk dancing. Both are [available](http://archive.org/details/The_Red_Detachment_of_Women) [online](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZseZpUOEyN4), for those who are interested in seeing them.
> 
> Finally, thank you to cheerleader-nim b. and t., for putting up with my whining, and editor-unni e., whose tireless green cursor fixing my stupid typos on gdocs and hawkish eye for detail are a source of constant awe and inspiration.


End file.
